


you've got stars in your eyes

by molotovhappyhour



Series: Let There Be Light [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Attempted Assassinations, Body Worship, Fist Fights, M/M, Modern Fantasy, Modern Royalty, No Guns, Prince Eren Yeager, Versatile in the Bedroom, Violence, they switch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 08:20:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 101,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6559150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi tries to pretend that the Crown Prince isn’t beautiful, tries to tell himself that it was the windswept hair and the setting sun, but he knows there’s only so long he can lie to himself, and it’s getting down to the wire. He can’t lie like he is forever. Not when Eren starts to look at him like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "i'm going to write this for an ereriweek prompt" i told myself like a lying liar

There’s a sea of sunflowers to the south of the palace.

It sounds like an exaggeration when Eren thinks about it like that, but as he leans against the stone railing of his balcony and watches them wave in a barely-there breeze, it’s the only _honest_ description. There’s nothing but sunflowers between the wall of the palace and the horizon, sighing softly as they brush against one another to follow the sun with their wide faces, from east to west, day after day.

They’re leaning a little bit to the west now, following the path of the sun and facing the road that leads to the polished iron of the palace gates, where smooth-edged cars are making their way through for this evening’s dinner. The capital looms in the distance, leaking the automobiles onto the road, all glinting windows and winking steel. The flowers closest to the smooth stone pathway ruffle in the blowback from the cars’ wheels.

From here, his view of the steps is obscured, but he can picture the bobbing heads, the stone faces of the guards, the sleek lines of skirts and fitted suits. Those with hair long enough to tie back will certainly have glittering decorations plaited into them, as they always do.

His own outfit feels stiff and uncomfortable as he shifts against the stone. Too many buttons in the front of his jacket and a ridiculous set of laces in the back, making it impossible to change in and out of it by himself. The white fabric, seamed in seafoam green, makes it difficult to even _want_ to eat, knowing that _somehow_ , food is going to end up where it most certainly doesn’t belong. The pants are no better with annoying laces up the outside of each leg, tightened to hug the shape of them, a deeper shade of green, but only barely. It’s not like it would hide any spilled drinks or anything.

(He remembers the last state dinner like this—dignitaries from province councils _everywhere_ , and a domino effect of unfortunate circumstances.

The wine stain never did come out of the front of his jacket. And it had been _impossible_ to get out of by himself.

His first act as King will be to set a different trend. He’s sure there are tailors who would be happy enough to change his wardrobe.)

The sunflowers bend to the side as a stronger huff of wind pushes against them, and Eren wonders if he even really _needs_ to go to this celebration. It’s not like there’s any political dealings happening. It’ll just be palace gossip, people flirting with one another for either a one night stand or ladder climbing, discussion about different provinces’ successes and failures over the course of this year.

“ _It’s a valuable experience_ ,” his mother would say. She thinks a lot of things are valuable—dinner parties, travelling between provinces, legal meetings, rules about leaving the palace.

Eren taps his fingers against the stone. It’s warm beneath his fingers, the sun having rested itself there all afternoon, sighing summer air through the open double-doors behind him. He wonders if the air outside the walls is just was warm. He wonders if it smells more like sunflowers the closer you get to them. He wonders what they smell like when there’s more than a hint of them, when it’s all of them at once.

(“ _i want to go outside,_ ” Eren had declared, years ago, when he was small and stupid and his body had been singing with the soreness of his first hand-to-hand training in the palace yard. It had been the closest he’d gotten to outside the walls.

“ _not unattended you don’t,_ ” his teacher had said, all frown lines and aged-wisdom. “ _there are monsters out there, waiting to gobble up little princes._ ”

It’s not just little princes monsters want to gobble up, Eren has come to find.)

He wonders what the world looks like, without someone else talking into his ear, without a tinted window between him and it, wonders what it’s like to walk around and not worry that someone will look at him and _know_ who he is.

When he breathes in, he tastes the hint of sunflowers.

And it is then that he turns around and makes for his bathroom, leaving the doors cast open, the summer following him in and clinging to his shoulders with a steadfast determination. There isn’t much he can do to disguise himself—not with his clothes the way they are and how _fucking unbelievable_ they are to remove—but there’s at least something he can do to make it a little less tense, a little _less_ likely that he’ll be discovered.

It’s just precautionary, anyway.

After all, he’s thought of the perfect cover. No one will come to look for him there.

-

There seems to be a rhythm in the way the cars go by as they make their journey to the palace. The flowers muffle them from this distance, only those closest to the road huffing at the injustice, but even still, Levi can feel their rumble in the earth beneath his feet.

The sky is going orange with the end of the day, and the cars have become fewer, sure, but that doesn’t mean they’ve _stopped_. It makes him wonder just what fashionably late _is_ to a party that has barely a beginning and barely an end. He wonders further as to what the point of it all is, if it really is a bonding experience between the provinces of this kingdom, sharing stories and rubbing elbows with the decision-makers of the land.

But it isn’t his problem. After all, it doesn’t really affect him much. The palace gardens are trim and tame and beautiful, the benches tucked within them equal parts obscured and just visible. The paths are artfully covered by colored leaves that will be swept aside tomorrow when more have fallen, just as they begin to crisp over in the summer heat. Levi had cultivated every aspect of those gardens.

He hopes they’re not a mess when he checks on them in the morning. But that’s a stupid thing to hope for.

(It’s why he’d left the palace for a little bit of space, giving Isabel control of the gardens while he was out. He _hates_ watching people leave trash along the packed-dirt path, hates watching people pluck fresh blooms and only to drop them somewhere else later, hates that fucking prickling feeling that crawls up his neck whenever there are too many people in one place.

It’s _dangerous_ for the royal family to throw parties like this, don’t they know?)

Levi stops within the embrace of the sunflowers when a sound brushes the shell of his ear.

For a moment, he thinks he’d imagined it. After all, with the flow of traffic slowing down so much, it’s easy to be surprised if the noises of the flower field seem out of place when the silence settles only to be broken again. But then a set of sunflowers wave a little—a ways down from where Levi had stopped himself. It’s not a natural sort of movement, as it would look when touched by a breeze. They shake, disturbed by something, and the movement continues in Levi’s direction.

It’s probably just one of the party-goers, snooping around outside the palace walls. They just went a little far, probably. They weren’t thinking, and then they ended up here. Obviously.

And yet Levi finds himself sliding one foot back, easing his weight upon it. It’s a defensive stance, a false looseness in his body, and it feels familiar in a way that he wished it didn’t. The soil is soft beneath the soles of his sneakers, will be soft still when he takes three quick steps forward, taking the trespasser off their feet, will still be soft when their back hits the ground and—

The sunflowers before him split down the middle and the figure stops dead across from him.

Levi’s heart stalls inside his chest, revving on nothing, like tires skidding in mud. It’s _palpitating_.

Perhaps he just hadn’t expected him to be as... beautiful as he is.

He looks more like the Queen Regent than the King Consort. His eyebrows are thick and regal, poised over eyes that have a depth of color that deepened as he’d gotten older, contrasting with the toasted-almond glow of his skin. He’s taller now, taller than he was ever supposed to be _allowed_ to get, and even with an old cloak tossed around his shoulders, even with his hair mussed by exertion and exploration, even with smears of dirt on the white of his outer jacket and along the knees, it’s impossible to miss the air around him that sings of royalty. Even the sunflowers seem to know, the closest ones having their faces turned toward the man before him.

The small, sunburst tattoo centered on his forehead, just above the crease between his eyebrows, only confirms the obvious, regardless of the fact that it’s partially covered by concealer, smeared by sweat.

This is the Crown Prince of Samudr.

This is Eren Jaeger.

And Levi would have known that, even if he hadn’t been working at the palace for the past ten years of his life.

(He’d been seventeen and frozen still by the groggy mumble of a child, “ _who are you?_ ”

Green eyes, the color of sea depths rather than woodland. His eyelids had been drooping, weighted by disturbed sleep, and Levi had been unable to move from his place in the doorway. The knife tucked inside his boot had felt heavy in a way that it hadn’t ever before.)

“Um,” Eren says, shame making his cheeks go dark, the burnt orange of the sunset hiding the true color of his embarrassment. His jaw sets as if he’s going to defend himself, defend his right to be in _Levi’s_ sunflower field, but he doesn’t say anything else. The only thing he does is watch him.

“Did you get lost, Your Highness?” Levi lifts an eyebrow, easing his left foot forward to come back in line with his right. It feels easy, the way he does it, like a casual movement of his body than the flicker between personas.

“What? I—“ This rush of embarrassment is deeper, pulling a deep red from his cheeks that’s visible even in the dying light, punctuated by reds and deep purples.

Levi taps the index finger of one hand against the place between his eyebrows, watching the realization rise on Eren’s face.

“I—“ He flushes again, rubbing at the back of his neck. When he looks like that, he looks younger than the twenty years Levi _knows_ he is. “I put foundation on it. I didn’t think it’d rub off, if I was careful.”

“Looks like you weren’t very careful,” Levi says.

Eren works his jaw around something, a frown pulling at the corners of his lips, before he replies, “I guess not, no.” He pauses, shifting his weight between his feet, dropping his hand from where it had been resting against the back of his neck. “I’d never been in the field before, so I guess I lost track of time.” He swallows, rubbing at his nose and leaving a smear of dirt behind.

A silence settles between them, watched over by the sentinels of the field.

Then Levi asks, “don’t you have a party to be at? Isn’t that something that you do?”

Eren swallows, his throat bobbing against the collar of his jacket. “Uh. I didn’t really want to be there.”

Levi’s other eyebrow joins the first, and he finds a smile touching his mouth. “And they—your family—they just let you leave the palace to go traipsing around in _my_ field?”

“This is— _yours?_ I—“ It’s obvious they don’t let this kid get out much. It would be obvious even if Levi didn’t already know. The Crown Prince hasn’t been allowed outside the palace walls unattended for his entire life. No one had even _known_ about the child until his twelfth birthday, when the Jaeger family decided to reveal his existence to the country at large.

(That’s not entirely true, Levi supposes.

 _Almost_ no one had known about the Crown Prince before his twelfth birthday. Those that did were people who had been trying to kill him.

That sunburst on his forehead has been a target since the day it had been inked there.)

“This is my hobby,” Levi tells him when the Prince manages to splutter himself into silence, glancing at the flowers around him as if he hadn’t really considered the fact that someone had to have managed this field. It’s not that shocking, really, or a ridiculous oversight. For someone that didn’t know flowers—for someone that didn’t know that these sunflowers are annuals, not perennials, and thus have to be replanted and maintained every year—it’s an honest mistake. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to think that a swathe of giant stalks just grew back every year with no maintenance.

But it’s still pretty fucking funny, the way Eren’s face folds like that.

“Hobby,” Eren repeats, tilting his head up to admire one of the sunflowers standing above him.

“Yeah,” Levi takes a step forward, watches as Eren takes a small step back, almost back into the cluster of flowers he’d emerged from. “Hobby. When I’m not working.”

“They’re very,” Eren says, glancing from Levi’s face to the sunflower closest to him, pausing a moment before he finishes with, “nice.”

It’s not an eloquent thing, that compliment. But it’s honest, just like his gaze when he looks the flower up and down, his eyes lingering on the petals, even though the reaching shadows are making the colors hard to see.

“I know,” Levi doesn’t move forward again when Eren takes another step back as he tries to move closer, settling instead two paces away. “I take good care of my flowers.”

“Yeah.” Eren speaks as if he’s not really listening, as if the act of reaching up to touch the sunflower’s petals is far more important than whatever it was Levi had just said. But he speaks again, as if he had, in fact, heard. “I wish we had these in the palace gardens. We only have the small ones.” He cups the head of the sunflower in one hand, cradling it against his palm gently. The image of tires skidding in mud comes to mind again as his heart sucks at nothing. It’s a weird feeling to have.

“What, small sunflowers not good enough for a king-to-be? You’ve got a palace, and now you want _proper sunflowers?_ ”

It’s hard to tell, now that the sky has gone dark purple, but he thinks he sees the tips of Eren’s ears go dark. “That’s _not_ what I said. The gardens are beautiful. They’ve got new shit—“ His nose wrinkles, a self-chastisement, and he tries again. “They’ve got new stuff in them every season, _all the time_. It’s just—“ Eren turns his head a little, glancing back toward the palace, glowing in the coming night with revelry, “It’s just I can see these from my window. I wanted to know what they smelled like.”

(Levi had seen the Prince in the gardens, before. The kid was impossible to miss, what with people announcing his presence with soft murmurs of _Your Highness_ and low bows every time he entered any room or corridor. It made him easy to avoid, even while he was working. If Eren was hiding by the rose bushes, Levi was tending to the hibiscuses, and so on.

It’s probably a foolish fear, to think that the Prince would recognize an assassin from when he was ten years old. It feels even more foolish, considering Eren hasn’t recognized him now.

But there’s been a safety his anonymity, in the fact that they’ve never truly met, and the conversation that they’re having is treading a little too closely to the edge of the line Levi had drawn when he’d put himself in the employ of the Royal Family.)

“And is the smell to the liking of Your Highness?” Years of practice have made him adept in the art of smoothing out the sharp lines of sarcastic syllables, but the twitch of Eren’s lips tell him that he could hear the undercurrent beneath his words.

“We find it to be acceptable,” he says as he drops his hand away from the head of the sunflower, leaving it to bow slightly at the loss. It takes a modicum of self-control for Levi not to smile, finding his sarcasm met with the practiced ease of an expert.

With his hand and eyes now free, Eren looks to the sky, stars beginning to show themselves against the darkness of the night sky, only the horizon tinted purple, past the almost-endless line of sunflowers.

“I should get back.” There’s a weight in what he says. Responsibility drops the words onto the soil with a heavy sound, makes them sink beneath the earth and take root there, hiding in the waving shadows of the flowers. “I won’t make it to dinner, but I’ll make it to the scolding afterwards.”

“The real highlight of the evening,” Levi tells him, watching tension pull Eren’s lips into a thin line as he wipes away the mostly-gone concealer still smeared across the symbol of his birthright.

When Eren turns, his hand rising to part the sunflowers he’d come from, Levi makes a suggestion he shouldn’t make. It’s an undecided thing—maybe spurred by the lingering guilt that had put him in the palace employee registry in the first place, maybe by the way Eren had looked as he’d come through the flowers when the sun had still been lighting them ablaze, looking like a regal mess, destined for the throne in a way he hadn’t when Levi had met him the first time.

“Let me walk you back,” is what he says. It feels illicit, forbidden, like something he _definitely_ shouldn’t be doing. It’s not like he’s giving his name, or telling him that he works for his family, and yet it still feels as if it’s a breach of some unwritten contract, some deal he’d made with himself after his failure years before. “It’s dangerous to be a Prince _and_ alone.”

The look Eren gives him could be, in another life, _scathing_. But in this light, and with the twist of his mouth, it just looks like an exercise in self-control, an effort to control whatever it is that’s rolling against his bones. He doesn’t blink as he regards Levi, tilting his head to the side.

And when he speaks, it’s deliberate, with all the weight of a decree of the monarchy, even though it’s not a proclamation at all: “I know.” A pause, and then, “are you ready to go?”

Eren pushes the flowers aside with one hand, watching as Levi passes him. His attention is a weight, settling onto Levi’s shoulders, as he falls into step beside him, with a reasonable distance between their bodies. If Levi were anyone else, he wouldn’t notice the half-an-inch’s worth of hesitation in Eren’s step, putting him only just barely behind Levi’s own stride.

It’s improper, if not _ridiculous_ , for a member of a Royal Family to push doors open or flowers to the side for someone else to enter.

It is then that Levi knows that Eren hadn’t been exaggerating moments before—the Crown Prince is, without a doubt, aware that there are dangers outside the palace walls. He is also aware that those dangers increase exponentially if he’s alone. But even more than that, Levi gets the impression that Eren knows that horror stories don’t just exist outside the walls. There are plenty that manage to get inside the smooth walls of the stone fortress.

(Green eyes in a shadowed corridor. Eren had been tired, sleep-heavy, and even if he had been able to use any of the training he’d been undergoing, the difference in their sizes would have been an impediment.

Eren Jaeger at ten years old couldn’t’ve taken Levi at seventeen.

He wonders, absently, if that would hold true, now—and then he stops. He’d made a choice, after all.)

Their bodies whisper through the sunflowers, Eren’s bootsteps huffing against the soil as they walk. The silence isn’t _stifling_ , or anything, but it’s not entirely comfortable either. Levi doesn’t guess that either of them expected anyone to be out in the flowers, especially with a banquet going on at the palace, and that fact is wedged between them, taking up the space there.

And so Levi breaks the not-silence of their walk, his hands tucked into his pockets. “So do you make a habit of ruining nice clothes, or is it just the restlessness of a party you don’t wanna go to?”

For several footsteps, Levi thinks that Eren won’t respond—that he’ll just keep walking, saying nothing, his boots an even rhythm against the dirt beneath their feet. But Eren straightens the cloak around his shoulders and says, “I’ve been having really shit luck with nice clothes.” A pause and a correction, though there’s no shift in his posture to denote a _mistake_. “I’ve been having some bad luck lately with nice clothes. But I just couldn’t get this off by myself.” Eren glances to the side, a smile dragging half his mouth upward. “Lacing in the back.”

“Ah,” Levi says, trying to get a view of Eren’s spine, though he wouldn’t be able to see the back of the jacket underneath the cloak even if Eren had been walking immediately beside him. But there is tight lacework on the back of Eren’s boots, the tie tucked against his calf rather than being exposed on the outside of the leather. “So it’s an ordeal to get undressed.” Levi arches one eyebrow, can see the polished stonework of the palace’s protective wall, carved with sweeping images and ornate detail to belie the defensive capability they possess. “Need attendants for that, too?”

The smile widens, wry and put-upon. “You have _no idea_.”

Levi breaks the cover of the flowers first, Eren almost a full step behind before he comes to a stop beside him.

“You know,” Eren says, unclipping the cloak from around his shoulders and rolling it up in his arms, “you haven’t bowed to me once.”

(Levi has prostrated himself exactly one time. His forehead had touched the marble floor in the Sunlit Hall, and the stone had been speckled like a nighttime sky—sliver-white flecks against black rock. The Queen Regent had been there, her clothes and posture immaculate, despite the fact that her life and the life of her family had been in his hands an hour before.

“ _i’ve got a confession for you, your majesty,_ ” he’d said.

She hadn’t needed to say anything for him to start talking.)

“I figured my height would count as respect enough,” Levi replies, as if there isn’t a series of memories swirling around his head just then. There’s a _reason_ he’d avoided the Crown Prince—loads of reasons, _tons_ of reasons. An endless amount of reasons.

Laughter, loud and full, bursts beside him. When Levi looks at him, Eren’s hand is pressed to his mouth to muffle it, his own face pulled tight with surprise, as if it had caught him off guard just as much as it had done to Levi himself.

It goes on for so long that Eren bends over slightly, his free arm tucked against his stomach, and Levi _knows_ that what he’d said hadn’t been _that_ funny. And yet here he is, the Crown-fucking-Prince doubled over at a _height joke_ at his expense.  It’s not a position he’d ever thought he’d find himself in, and he isn’t entirely sure how he feels about the whole thing, just knows that it’s tugging at the hair rising on his arms one by one.

“I guess,” Eren wheezes at the ground, trying to straighten up and succeeding in starts and stops. “I guess it works out, ha.” He turns, a little, facing Levi evenly in a way that moves him without consulting his head, so that they’re standing face-to-face.  The smile on his face is pulled into softness by the shadows, cut through with lit braziers perched at even intervals on the battlements of the walls. It’s a weird contrast to the steelwork of the capital down the road, but it’s a representation of the resilience of the monarchy, the timelessness of the government rooted here.

“Thanks,” is what Eren says next, a casual placement of gratitude. It doesn’t even sound _weird_ coming from a royal mouth, and it feels like it should.

“Sure,” Levi tells him. “Anytime.”

He hadn’t meant to say that—hadn’t really meant to come this far at all. But it makes Eren’s smile wider, the brazier’s light glittering on his teeth.

“Right,” Eren says, taking one step backward, not showing Levi his spine. “Anytime.”

Levi turns first, giving Eren the opportunity to disappear around the curve of the wall, heading toward wherever it is that he’d left from. He makes his own way toward the staff entrance, tucked into the carving of an oak tree, like an entryway between realms, something out of a fantasy novel. The palace is a piece of artwork all on its own, and Levi has never had an opportunity to forget that.

The dinner and subsequent entertaining won’t be done for at least two hours more, meaning the gardens will be occupied until then. And so Levi finds himself wandering the emptiest corridors he can, his footsteps making barely enough sound to echo in the hallway around him.

Eren had never asked his name, he realizes. Had never asked much about him at all.

It’s a reinforcement of the invisibility he’d been trying so hard for, all this time. It’s a _relief_ , a blessing, and goddamn _gift_ —and yet it feels _weird_ , now. To know all these things about the Crown Prince, to know that Eren doesn’t know anything about him in return.

It feels invasive in a way it never has until now.

(“ _you disappeared_ ,” Isabel tells him when he makes his way back to the staff quarters, hoping to creep into his own room without getting _any_ attention and failing. “ _you missed a_ whole _dinner._ ”

“ _i was busy_ ,” Levi replies, and hopes that she doesn’t see anything in the line of his shoulders, doesn’t find anything worth looking into, doesn’t want to know why it looks like he wants to beat his face into the wooden door that he’s got in a white knuckled grip. “ _it’s sunflower season_.”

“ _a whole dinner_ ,” she says, as if that changes anything. It doesn’t.

But she’s full enough to leave him alone, tired enough to step away and shut her own door, leaving him alone with his own—self. Thoughts. Concerns.

He’d never considered the Crown Prince growing up to be beautiful. Had never wondered what would happen when they inevitably _had_ to meet past worrying that Eren would recognize him, would recognize the shape of his shoulders, his height, his eyes, _something_.

But there’s something else stirring in his heart now. His heart is having issues, once more, with traction—a whining of spinning wheels with nowhere to go.

Mud splatters the inside of his chest, and his heart stiffens, revs, stalls.

When he breathes, he inhales sunflowers.

When he breathes, he exhales the ghost of laughter, never born, swallowed by that of a louder timbre, surprised and from the belly, still ringing in his ears.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the surprise that makes Eren forget his niceties, the things you’re supposed to say when someone asks you how you are. It’s that that makes him say, instead, “it’s you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prince eren in my beautiful son and googling flowers is SO DIFFICULT

(His mother had been furious.

It’d been in that quiet way of hers, of course; telling him how what he had done was wrong, laying out the dangers of his wandering around, alone, when he had business to attend to. It had only made her a little more quiet, a little more angry, when he’d pointed out that she didn’t like it when he wandered around alone, whether or not he had business to attend to.

The look she’d given him had made her sleepclothes look like the natural regalia of the monarchy.

He had squared his shoulders anyway.)

“Again,” Shadis throws his voice like one throws rocks, and it hits the edges of the sawdust circle before rebounding back toward the center, where Eren looms over one of the unlucky guards who got recruited for combat training today.

They’d been laid flat moments before, sawdust breaking their fall barely at all, leaving them to cough out the air that had previously been in their lungs. They lay there for a moment, gasping, before they roll over and push themselves upright, dusting off their backside with their palms. Another moves to take their place as they brush fingers with one of their companions, a tapping-out gesture that had gotten a lot more common the older Eren had gotten.

The Prince’s Guard has decided to pull out their big guns. Eren can’t say he’s surprised. It’s getting to be about that time of day.

Annie huffs her hair away from her eyes, easing into a fighting stance, the slant of the sunlight sharpening her features into deadly points. But there’s a smile touching her lips, and it only widens when Eren shifts on the sawdust to take her on.

This is how it always goes, every morning. The sun rises, Eren gets dressed, and he fights.

Or, rather, maybe it’s better to say he begins to fight _back_.

( _everywhere’s dangerous_ , he’d wanted to say beneath the Queen Regent’s withering stare. _inside or outside, what’s the fucking difference?_

He’d swallowed that part of him, let it cut his throat on the way down, let it his mother tilt her head and wrinkle her nose and express how concerned she was about the flippancy with which he’d regarded his own welfare. It didn’t seem wise to tell her that he was _very_ much concerned with his life.

It’s simply that he’d had enough of running away from the monsters that wanted to gobble up little princes.)

The tunic is tight, laced _ridiculously_ in the back, and the first time they’d done this, his dress boots had chafed his heels raw. There are calluses there, now, from years of practice—and he wishes he could fight in the combat leathers of the Guard, even if he only ever got to do that _once_. It would be nice to breathe properly, to give the rigidity of his spine a chance to relax, to relieve some of the tension in his shoulders.

But Shadis would say—has said _multiple times_ —that “ _this will be when you’re most vulnerable and when you’re most likely to have an attempt on your life. Therefore, this is the outfit you’ll be fighting in._ ”

It’s an exercise in patience as he and Annie circle each other. Their bootsteps are quiet against the sawdust, a barely-there exhale of air beneath the soles. Echoes of sounds from other ends of the palace dance over the top of the training yard, trying and failing to disturb the surface Eren’s concentration as he waits for an opening in Annie’s stance.

She offers none as she redistributes her weight on her feet a heartbeat before she moves forward, leaning her upper body out of Eren’s reach as one of her legs comes up in a roundhouse kick aimed at the side of his head. It’s a bold maneuver to start out with, one that makes the rest of the Guard shift uncomfortably, even as he drops beneath her boot to try and steal her supporting leg out from beneath her.

Annie dances backward, tucking her arms closer to her chest as she moves back within Eren’s space, aiming her fists in quick, practiced jabs at his face and stomach. Of the many shots she attempts to make, she only lands two—the first hits just above his bellybutton, the second against his cheekbone.

The force of her knuckles against his cheek is enough to bruise, but the punch brings her close enough that he catches her arm before she can pull it back, twisting his body in a way that swings her to the side as he kicks out both her legs, slamming her to the ground on her back. The only sign she gives of her discomfort is a quiet grunt before she rolls backwards to push herself back on her feet, sawdust clinging to the tunic beneath her leather armor. 

Her hair is beginning to fall from the bun twisted at the back of her head, but she makes no move to fix it, keeping her eyes on Eren as they begin to circle each other once more. Her breath is coming in deep, even inhalations, a sign of the effort she was putting into their spar. Eren’s own heart is racing in his chest, but he has yet to start huffing with exertion, breathing through his nose to keep the stress off his face.

Annie hesitates, for a split second, across the sawdust covered area, and Eren launches himself across the empty space to aim a fist for the center of her face. If it were to connect, it would break her nose—but he knows it isn’t going to, knows it just like he knows that she’ll lean to the side, lifting her arm in a block, not expecting Eren to throw his momentum into a kick at her hip—

Her body falls beneath the force of his foot, but it’s not a blessing. Both her hands fist in his shirt and she yanks him to the ground with her, bringing them together in a close-quarters brawl that limits the use of his legs.

Eren slams his forehead against Annie’s hard enough to blur his vision, her face almost obscured by the tunneling effect of the headbutt. She gasps, tensing above him—and it’s an opening Eren uses to roll them, pinning her with his body and pressing his forearm on her throat.

He doesn’t let up until she taps the sawdust with her palm three times, and even then he gets to his feet warily.

She rises two breaths after he does, rubbing the red indentation his circlet had left behind beneath her bangs. Deeper colour will rise to it later—just like a matching bruise will bloom upon his own forehead. But at least his will be hidden by ornamentation.

“I guess you really are as hardheaded as you look.” There’s approval in there, somewhere. It makes her words stick together when she speaks.

“Thanks,” Eren replies, easing into a smile. “It comes from years of slamming my head against walls for fu—“

None of the Guard flinch when Eren gets slammed to his knees by someone throwing themselves against his back, and for a moment panic almost makes him pliant against the ground. But the moment an arm loops itself around his shoulder and another makes for his throat, he finds himself spurred back into action.

He uses one hand to keep the one arm from getting him in a chokehold, rolling his body to press his—his what, his assailant?—against the sawdust with his weight. With his other arm, he slams backward with his elbow, feeling a whimper disturb the hair on the back of his skull. He aims backward, again, with more intent, swearing loudly. Both the arm around his shoulder and the one pressing against his hand loosen enough for him to twist within them, reaching for the knife in his boot to press it against the skin of his assailant’s throat as he brackets their body with his knees.

And when Eren looks down upon them, he finds Jean staring back up at him, gasping for breath.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he says, even with the blade of Eren’s knife threatening to dig into the skin of his neck when he swallows, “you’re fucking _relentless_.”

“You _jackass_ ,” Eren pushes himself up, his hands shaking as he shoves the knife back into his boot. “You fucking _asshole_ , I was going to _kill you_.” Eren lifts his eyes from Jean’s face, leaving him on the sawdust to catch his breath as he glances around the circle of the small arena, meeting the eyes of every Guard member there. Almost each and every one of them look away first.

But Shadis holds his gaze with absolutely no effort whatsoever.

“Excellent form, Your Highness.” There isn’t even _sweat_ beading on the bare skin of his head, and Eren really thinks there ought to be. “You handled that beautifully.”

Eren gets the sneaking suspicion that his voice will shake if he speaks without thinking. And so he sighs slowly, swallows, and straightens his spine to give him time enough to level his racing pulse before he says, “I almost stabbed him in the _jugular_.”

Shadis only blinks, unhurried. “You _didn’t_ stab him in the jugular.”

Jean speaks from his place still spread upon the ground. “He did _almost_ stab me.”

“Generally,” Eren folds his hands in front of him to keep his fingers still as he speaks past Jean’s addendum, “I’m notified when I’m going to be surprised in the yard.”

Leather creaks around them as guards shift nervously, eager to be anywhere but here while at the same time being in possession of too much respect for both parties to just walk away. But the tension is eating at them, and it’s evident in the way their boots scrape at the dirt beneath them, in the way their eyes keep flickering from the center of the yard back to the ground, in the way that some of them just can’t seem to stand still.

It doesn’t bother Shadis in the least. “How often have you been notified of the attempts on your life?” A pause. The easy heat of the summer sun warms the circlet pressed against the skin of his forehead. “Your Highness.”

(Eren remembers a few of them, in pieces.

Once, a chef’s apprentice had dropped dead at a state dinner in one of the provinces. He’d plucked from Eren’s plate, had winked at him like it was a secret, had turned blue in the face when he could no longer breathe properly. His face had turned purple when death took him.

There had been another, where two palace guards that had come with his family on a trip to the Western Islands had been smothered before anyone had had the time to react. The assassin had been apprehended—and had died.

And still another one, where fire was started in the stables and two horses had been killed. Eren had been preparing to ride one of them, lacing his boots as he’d breathed in the first stinging taste of smoke.

Each one had been a complete surprise.)

“I could’ve stabbed him in the jugular,” Eren repeats anyway, even as his stomach twists beneath his chest, crawling up toward his solar plexus in a wave of nausea. He _hates_ it when memories sneak up on him like that—when they throw him to his knees like Jean had, when they threaten to choke him with reminders of why he’s out here in the first place.

“But you didn’t,” Shadis rolls his shoulders in a stiff shrug but still doesn’t drop his eyes. “It’s a testament to your skill.”

It takes a moment for him to gather the air he needs, and then it takes two, but when Eren speaks again, his stomach has stopped trying to recreate an encore of his breakfast. “If I’d killed him,” he says carefully and clearly, as if he’d hand-plucked the words from his own mouth and placed them around his body in a precise order, “it would’ve been on you.”

He holds Shadis in place with his eyes for a moment longer before looking away, glancing across the faces of the Prince’s Guard instead.

“You’re all dismissed. Get some lunch, or something. Whatever it is you do when you’re not babysitting.”

The laughter is delicate and soft, but so full of relief Eren can almost taste it as it rises from the dirt, can practically feel it as it follows them toward the southern armory.

Shadis is no longer there when Eren glances down at Jean, who had not moved from the place he’d landed during the entirety of whatever sort of pissing match that’d been. 

“You going to get up sometime soon, or are you just planning to sit on your ass all day and sunbathe?”

“I’m thinking sunbathing,” Jean replies, peeling open one eye to regard him. “My life’s still flashing before my eyes.” He pauses before pushing himself into a sitting position, from there rising to his feet. “Were you really gonna kill me?”

Eren says nothing as he rolls his shoulders, can feel the sweat drying on them beneath his tunic, and starts heading back toward the palace. Jean follows after him with a theatrical sigh, falling into step just ahead of him, the standard formation that they use when they wander the palace together, or when there’s an armed excursion outside the walls, or when they travel anywhere together at all.

It’s cooler within the shadows of the open-air walkway as they make the walk back toward the palace-proper, their boots tapping against the stone floor arhythmically, blending in with the hurried steps of palace staff and the slower swagger of off-duty palace guards. The sound scatters itself outside, disappearing before it can echo itself back toward the walkway.

They pass an ornate door and a series of windows that stretch along one of the many corridors of the palace, foregoing the comfort of the air conditioning for a more sedate pace around the body of the main building. The choir of footsteps that had spread around them on the way from the southern armory fades away, until it’s just the two of them.

Eren begins to drag his heels. It’s a gesture entirely unbecoming of a King-to-be.

“I wouldn’t’ve killed you,” Eren says, even though the conversation had died the moment he’d begun walking away from the yard, even though Jean had _let_ it die. His knees ache as they keep walking. “I was just thrown off a little, that’s all.”

(He thinks about his knife against Jean’s throat. Thinks about the chef’s assistant with the purple face and terrified eyes.

He thinks about his mother, and the way she’d asked “ _are you_ trying _to get someone to kill you?_ ”

He doesn’t know if he hates _anyone_ enough to want them as dead as others want _him_.

It’s one thing to fight a person. It’s another thing entirely to kill them.)

“You were thrown off a _lot_ ,” Jean glances over his shoulder, an almost-sneer twisting his mouth. “I thought you weren’t going to fight back for a second. Admit it, dude, I got one over on you, and you were mad about it.”

Eren takes a moment to wash memories from the inside of his eyelids as he lifts his circlet slightly to wipe at the sweat against his forehead, brushing over a forming bruise as gently as he can, though the skin is tender to the touch regardless. When he centers it back in place, he says, “okay, maybe I wouldn’t’ve killed you today, but I’ll kill you next time.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

It feels normal, this conversation. It makes the split-second of fear from the yard feel like all the other memories—untouchable, over with, finished. “‘Excuse me’ what?”

Jean scoffs loud enough to bounce against the building behind them as the perfumed breeze from the gardens brushes against Eren’s cheeks. “Excuse me, _Your Highness_.”

“Better.” The plants flutter when they walk by, the soft sigh blending in with softer sounds deeper in the speckled greenery. “We think the Crown can forgive your insult this once.”

“Why is that always your go-to joke?” Jean stops, turning to face him, his hip cocked out in a way that really _would_ be unacceptable if there were other people around. “You always _imagine_ some insult and then use your royal words, or whatever, to forgive me for them like this is some kind of sick practice for you, which _I_ don’t think is very fair, because you have plenty of other people who’d let you dance on their ribcages if you’d wanted, and—“

Another voice—much softer than Jean’s, one of the sounds from inside the gardens themselves—catches his attention and holds it. It pulls his eyes from Jean’s face, turns his head toward the obscured paths down the smooth steps from the open walkway.

It reminds him of sunflowers eight feet tall that he’d had to reach up to touch.

“Your Highness?” Jean had stopped with whatever injustice he’d thought of for himself. It doesn’t sound like this is the first attempt for his attention.

“Shut up,” Eren tells him. Jean huffs beside him, probably arching both eyebrows and getting ready for another tirade, but Eren is trying to _listen_ , “hold on.”

Jean doesn’t say anything as Eren makes his way down the steps and into the gardens, the myriad scents of flowers caressing his cheeks, tousling his hair when a breeze jostles the plants. The voice gets louder, is coupled with others, and it is, without a doubt, one hundred percent familiar.

“Isabel, _let it go_ ,” the voice says as Eren follows the stone path through a tunnel of orange honeysuckle. He can hear Jean, trailing behind him, as he reaches up to pluck one of the blossoms, sending vibrations along the length of the ceiling, disturbing a fat honeybee from its place among them. “It was _one dinner_ , two nights ago. There were still leftovers the next morning. I didn’t _starve_ , and I didn’t miss the party of the fucking century.”

The honeybee finds a new perch within the honeysuckle as Eren steps back into the sunlight, rounding the soft shoulder of the path and finding three people at the end of it, sitting upon the stairs of a small gazebo, painted with a cherry-wood finish. Small sunflowers circle the outside, despite the enclosed space of the path’s end. The woman to the right is toying with the stem of one of them, the bloom of another tucked behind her ear, just above a low pigtail.

(The person sitting on the highest stair, between the other two, is the man from two evenings before. He looks different, a little, in proper daylight, the planes of his face no longer smoothed out by the setting sun. His cheekbones are sharper now, the corners of his lips a little more defined.

His body, however, is looser—there’s less tension in his shoulders, the evident fighting stance from that night nothing more than a memory, like so much else it seems to him. It makes Eren wonder if he’d imagined the sliding back of a work-boot in the soil, the slight angling of the body to make it easier to throw a punch depending on who walked out of the sunflowers. There’s nothing even remotely like that within the man before him now.

But his eyes are still the same; the colour of stormclouds on a horizon, dragging rain behind them, blurring the line between the sky and the earth.

Eren feels something skitter inside his heart, feels something like static in the back of his head. His face feels warm, but it doesn’t feel like summer.)

After he freezes at the end of the pathway, it takes barely a moment for Eren to be noticed, and he feels the threefold attention like weights.

The woman and the blonde man, both to either side of the—the—the sunflower man, scramble to their feet and bow at the waist. The small sunflower blossom falls from behind the woman’s ear, along with a strand of her red hair.

The sunflower man’s movements are slightly slower and much stiffer, but just as surprised. It’s an encore of the day they met, all tension in his shoulders, but there’s no one to hit this time.

“Your _Highness_ ,” the woman says as the three of them rise from their bows, keeping her eyes averted respectfully. Eren figures that this must be Isabel. He’s seen her before, in the gardens. Just never this far in. “This is—a surprise. How... are you?”

“Fine, thank you.” There’s a—there’s a breathlessness to his own voice that he doesn’t really understand. It’s unexpected, to find this man here. He wouldn’t’ve thought that the caretaker of the sunflower field would be at the _palace_ , much less work here, though he supposes it makes _sense_. After all, for it to be there, year after year... But then again, Eren hadn’t thought that anyone had been taking _any_ kind of care of it. So this is—it’s just surprising. It’s the surprise that’s making his throat so tight, making it hard to breathe.

It’s the _surprise_ that makes him forget his niceties, the things you’re supposed to say when someone asks you how you are. It’s _that_ that makes him say, instead, “it’s _you_.”

Isabel’s head twitches, turns, and her eyes meet the blonde man’s. Between them, the tender of the sunflowers has his own gaze fixed on the dirt at the end of the path.

“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else,” is what he says, and his voice is _exactly_ the same. It’s careful, the way he chooses his words, the way he sets them down at the foot of the stairs, the way the garden breeze teases them across the dirt.

“No.” His windpipe doesn’t work with him any better this time. He still feels a little bit breathless, a little bit light-headed, and his heart feels stuck somewhere between his lungs and the back of his throat. “It’s you, I’m sure. I—“ Eren stops, the words dying upon his tongue.

The gardener—as far as Eren can guess, by the soil on his knees and the pairs of gloves sitting in the shade of the gazebo—works his jaw around something, chewing it over before he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

(He doesn’t know the man’s name.

He doesn’t know the man’s name, but knows his face, and can’t say _anything_ without implying that the both of them had met, _outside the palace_ , after Eren had already insisted that he’d been all by himself in the flower field.

And whoever he is—whatever his name is—doesn’t want to talk here.)

“That is _not_ how you speak to a member of the royal family, and you might want to check your _fucking_ tone before you—“

Eren lifts a hand and Jean stops. The space between his shoulder blades is starting to sweat again—a combination of the sun and the embarrassment of whatever it is that’s happening _right now_. Even his _palms_ are sweating, and he’s almost certain that there’s a deep colour in his cheeks because he can feel it crawling toward his ears.

But his voice is level when he says, “it’s the heat.” Isabel and the blonde share another look, while the sunflower keeper seems to be watching the toes of Eren’s boots. “It must be getting to me. My delicate sensibilities aren’t used to all this labour.”

Something twitches on all three of their mouths, and it might almost be a smile if Eren were anyone else.

(But he’s not anyone else, and that is painfully clear right now.)

“Your Highness—“ Jean’s trying to _press_. Eren turns to look at him. He stops trying.

“The gardens look...” Eren searches for a word that doesn’t feel awkward, for one that doesn’t give away whatever the fuck is happening beneath his ribs. “...nice.”

“Great adjective, Your Highness.” It’s cover than Jean’s providing him right then, protection from this whole mess that Eren hadn’t even really thought about falling into. Not a disaster, really, but it’s not what he’d wanted either.

“Eat shit,” Eren replies, taking a step backward and flicking his fingers to indicate that Jean ought to do the same. “Thanks for your time,” is what Eren spares over his shoulder, already disappearing back beneath the honeysuckle so he doesn’t have to see their faces when he does.

They’re probably _baffled_ , worried that the Crown Prince has lost his mind or might be suffering from heatstroke. Heaven forbid he’d been _poisoned_ , or anything like that. _God_ , that had been embarrassing. Embarrassing and _stupid_. They’d just—it had been a half hour at most that the sunflower keeper and Eren had talked. It hadn’t been _special_ , had it? He’d just laughed, a little. He’d just seen sunflowers. He’d just been walked back home, like something out of a ridiculous teenage novel.

He pushes his hair away from his forehead, brushing his fingers over his circlet, coming to a stop only when they’re free of the floral smells clinging to the air around the gardens, tucked away in the shade of another open-air walkway.

It’s a sign of weakness when he leans against the stone face of the library. Even _worse_ when he begins to tug at the laces of his tunic, trying to pry it from his body. It’d be almost _lewd_ to walk around in a fucking undershirt when the clothing is so formal, but it’s _hot_ , and the dried sweat is starting to itch, and he’d fucking _embarrassed himself_ , because he thought that, what, he’d had one of those unheard of serendipitous meetings with a completely unknown person, despite his mother’s constant concerns about _murder_ around every corner and—

“ _Eren_ ,” Jean’s hand against his bicep jolts his body hard enough to slam his head against the library wall. Judging by the spots in front of his vision, it’ll be enough to form a bruise to match the one that’ll be on his forehead come morning. “Are you okay?”

He drops his hands away from the laces, huffing out a breath that tastes like honeysuckle. “I’m fine. It’s just hot and you know I get pissy during the summer. I’m _fragile_.”

“Bullshit.” There’s a frown pulling at Jean’s mouth, thinning his lips almost hilariously. “You’ve been off for a couple days. You never bail on dinner parties that big. You never talk to the Queen that way. Shit, dude, you never talk to _Shadis_ that way. And I don’t know what _that_ was, but...” Jean shrugs and it looks painful to do so, not natural at all. “But are you okay?”

(“ _how do you trust people if you’re worried they’re going to kill you all the time?_ ” It had been a rhetorical question, mumbled under his breath, and he’d asked it when he was fifteen and petulant, still reeling from the poison-induced anaphylaxis that had killed a person who had had _nothing_ to do with the royal family, past being unlucky enough to serve him food for one night.

“ _you don’t_ ,” the Queen Regent had replied, “ _unless you choose them very carefully_.”

He’d wondered what criteria his father had met. He hadn’t wanted to know badly enough to ask.)

It’s like there’s something clawing its way out of his body, something restless and terrifying, something that won’t let him go.

Or maybe it’s just him, clawing at his own walls, at _stone_ walls, between himself and everyone else.

Maybe the loneliness is getting to him.

“I’m fine,” Eren repeats himself, stepping away from the wall with his laces loose near the back of his neck. He reaches back up to tie them in a facsimile of proper aesthetic. These clothes are _fucking_ stupid. “Starving, though.” He pauses, watching as the frown stays stamped on Jean’s features, stretching his already long face into something longer. And so Eren persists, a little. “Kicking your ass worked up an appetite.”

At that, Jean scoffs, his face smoothing into a look of incredulity. “ _Bullshit_. You did not _kick my ass_ , you elbowed me hard enough to, like, rupture my appendix. That was hardly a fight at all.”

“I kicked your ass and I want food. So we’re going to the kitchens.”

Jean falls into step, just ahead of him, as they begin walking in another new direction. “What, you want me to _escort_ you to the kitchens? Afraid a bee followed you out of the gardens? Or maybe you’ll start making eyes at the staff again?”

Eren finds himself snorting, though the knot inside his chest doesn’t relax any. “I wasn’t _making eyes_.”

( _do you know the short guy’s name?_ gets stuck in Eren’s throat. He leaves the words there to fester.)

“Then what would you call that?”

“I’d call that none of your fucking business.”

He focuses on the soreness still in his knees as they walk, slightly off-pace of one another. It’s familiar enough to make this trip easy, smooth enough to make everything feel normal. The sweat on his palms has dried well enough to make it like they’d never given him away in the gardens.

The food they rescue from the kitchens washes out the taste of honeysuckle lingering behind his teeth.

-

(Levi had been careless.)

Darkness chases away heat of the daytime, but the stone faces of the palace and the pathways of the garden hold onto the warmth for as long as they can, giving the gardens the feel of a greenhouse at the center of the palace’s layout. It’s not _oppressive_ out here, but it’s warmer among the plants than it is underneath the covered walkways that surround them.

He breaks away from a small stream as it babbles softly into an open pond, taking a packed dirt path into another part of the garden. Moths flutter around the staggered streetlamps, giving the illusion of a slightly-wild city garden, like something from the capital. It makes the shadows of the plants soft and unassuming, smoothed out by the artfully flickering incandescent lightbulbs.

(He’d spent _years_ of his life avoiding any contact with the Crown Prince, just to be _safe_ , just to make everything easier, and now he’d seen him twice in three days, and one of those had been _inside the palace_.

How could he have let something like that happen, when he’d been _so careful_ up ‘til now?

And in front of Isabel and Farlan, no less.)

When the palace has gone to sleep as much as it can, the gardens are the place it’s easiest to think. It’s quiet and undisturbed, and any of the palace staff that’s still manning any sort of operation stay mostly away from them. It’s a place of contemplation, anyway—a place for the royal family and other associates to spend time in a different environment, an island in a beautiful but rigid stone fortress.

But for Levi, it has been and always will be a carefully crafted hideaway. It’s a place he’d made with his own hands, untouched by anything he’d done before he’d entered the Queen Regent’s service. It’s a place he can go when he can’t sleep, when the past bites at his heels a little too closely, when there’s not enough space anywhere else to breathe.

Harebells line the edges of the packed earth, their drooping blossoms swaying gently as he walks by them. Diamond frost is tucked behind them, just out of the range of human touch, unless someone were determined enough to crush the harebells. The helpful distance prevents the staff children from getting rashes from the sap, while allowing the plant itself to live a life virtually undisturbed until the fall and winter, when they get moved to make room for more seasonal replacements.

The diamond frost changes into tapertip onion when the sides of the path get rockier, stones having been artfully placed in the soil for some variety. Thick, ornamental latticework begins at the slow curve around a soft corner, curling around and over a tucked-away alcove while the dirt path turns itself in a different direction, further into toward the center of the gardens.

Levi makes his way toward the alcove, brushing by pink and white cosmos at the base of the polished marble lattice. Creeping phlox has managed to crawl its way higher up, catching and holding soil between the lattice and the wall behind it. The air hangs heavy with the cool humidity of nighttime and the perfume from the blossoms, even as the flowers themselves try and cling to the warmth from the afternoon.

One of the cosmos leaves pollen against the side of Levi’s boot as he rounds the corner properly, brushing his fingers over the creeping phlox, the petals soft beneath his fingertips.

And just outside a circle of light, provided by the aesthetic streetlamp within the awning of the lattice, he freezes. Silently.

He mentally corrects his math from before; he’s seen the Crown Prince three times in as many days. The universe _has_ to be laughing at him.

(“ _what was_ that?” Isabel had breathed the question with a smile wide enough to show her teeth. Excitement clung to her shoulders like a formal cape, her hands curled into fists in front of her chest, the knuckles white with barely contained enthusiasm. “ _do you know the prince?_ ”

“ _no_ ,” Levi had told her. It had been a lie—but a lot of the things he’d told to Isabel and Farlan had been carefully given lies. True enough to give him wiggle room, false enough that no one really knew how well, exactly, he’d known the Prince when he’d been told to remove the royal family from the governmental hierarchy. “ _it was a mistake. he said so._ ”

Farlan had toyed with an unlit cigarette he’d placed between his lips. Smoking was forbidden inside the palace walls.

“ _he seemed to know_ you _._ ”

“ _he_ doesn’t _,”_ Levi had told them, and that had been the absolute truth. “ _he said so_.”

Neither Isabel nor Farlan looked like they’d believed him, but the only thing that had mattered was that they let the subject drop.)

Eren Jaeger sits across the stone bench beneath the curved overhang of the lattice, a textbook open wide against his thighs, but he’s different than either of the two times than Levi had seen him in the past three days. The person before him now isn’t skipping a formal dinner or wandering the palace in any sort of filthy regalia. His spine isn’t rigid with the attention of others, his shoulders aren’t stiff with whatever weight he’d decided to bear that day, his lips aren’t tense with the things that royalty aren’t supposed to say.

He looks so _different_ , but at the same time so like the Prince Levi knows he is that it’s jarring.

The lamplight dances over the edges of Eren’s face, their lines softened by the shadows, and his eyelashes caress his cheeks every time he blinks. His circlet from earlier is nowhere to be seen, though the tattoo on his forehead is borne with no shame, sitting exposed to the gardens and the night and Levi himself.

In a T-shirt and sweats, he _looks_ his twenty years, maybe just a little bit younger, a little bit more inexperienced with the world. Levi doesn’t even know how he _got_ that shirt, emblazoned with the logo of the capital’s eminent university, a sliver bear printed on the deep purple of the shirt’s fabric. Everyone in the palace knows that professors visit the Prince during the week to run him through the collegiate wringer, but Levi hadn’t known that any of them had brought _gifts_.

Eren shifts on the bench, dropping a pencil from one hand to tilt downward, picking a thermos up from the ground beside the bench and taking a sip from it, sighing softly against the lip of the cup when he’s done.

It’s an incredibly intimate moment, moreso than any other one that Levi has ever seen in the Crown Prince’s life, including the sleepy question in a dark corridor when he was a ten year old boy.

It’s probably that intimacy that makes Levi speak. This is something too private to see without coming clean about his presence here.

“Tough read?” He steps out from the rounded corner of creeping phlox and into the light afforded him by the lamp.

Eren glances up from his textbook, his thermos resting by his hip on the bench. He does a doubletake when he glances over Levi’s face, and there’s a shift in his expression that’s almost too-quick to notice. When Levi blinks, he’s not looking at an isolated student that anyone could find on a university campus—he’s back to looking at the bonafide Crown Prince, who’s watching him warily, textbook still open on his lap.

“Excuse me,” Eren says, blinking slowly in a feline gesture of consideration, “do we know each other?”

(The moment he’d noticed Eren this afternoon, he’d thought the recognition on his face had come about due to the Prince’s sleeping on their meeting. He’d thought that the Prince had pieced together some parts of his memory and was seeing Levi has he’d been ten years before.

But instead he’d seen a muscle in Eren’s jaw twitch this afternoon—had seen his lips thin and fall, had watched his eyebrows furrow and relax, had watched the _split_ second of hurt flicker in his eyes before he’d smoothed over his expression and had been nothing but the Prince, wrapped in the smell of summer flowers and his own authority.

Levi hadn’t expected him to look like that. It had caught him by surprise, like everything _else_ today.)

He takes a few steps closer, watching Eren watch him, keeping his arms at his sides to look as casual as possible. He pretends like his heart isn’t revving against mud like it had been when the sunset had touched Eren’s face with gentle fingers. “Are we supposed to? Know each other, I mean.”

The muscle that had twitched in the gardens earlier in the day twitches now, and Eren shifts on the bench, dropping his legs to the ground. He chews over his words before he says them. “We’ve met before. So we should know each other.”

“‘So we _should_ know each other’,” Levi repeats. “But _do_ we know each other?”

Eren blinks again, just as slowly as before. It’s the look of a man taking necessary steps ahead of the conversation they’re having. It’s like watching a person play chess.

And then Eren catches him off-guard. Again. “What are you asking?”

It’s a direct question that Levi hadn’t anticipated. In every conversation he’d ever had with the Queen Regent, from his original supplication to every minor chat they’d had since, it felt like he was trying to step his way out of his own noose. Or like he was being coerced into saying exactly what he was supposed to.

But he’s spent his whole life feeling like that.

He can’t tell if this is refreshing or not. And so all he can manage to say is, “what?”

“What you’re asking. I don’t understand.” Eren’s lips thin, a mirror image of this afternoon—but without the circlet catching sunlight, without the unhappiness pulling his skin tight across his face, it looks different. Still regal, still intense and unshakable, but not the _same_. “I—you’re right that I probably—“ his lips thin a little more and he swallows. “Speaking to you today was probably not my best move. But I—I don’t know what you’re asking me? Sure, I don’t know your _name_ , but we know each other. I think.” Eren’s eyes glitter, green and deep and clear. “You plant sunflowers that don’t regrow as a hobby.”

Levi blinks. Pauses. Blinks again. “I don’t fucking understand you.” He coughs up the words, appalled at himself and the boundaries he’d set and is now crossing over in a ridiculously easy-to-avoid situation. It’s like the Prince has his own gravitational pull, and Levi’s somehow gotten himself stuck. Another pause. Another blink. The Guardsman’s admonition comes back from this afternoon, stopped dead by a flick of the Prince’s fingers. “Your Highness.”

Eren’s eyebrows furrow. “ _What_?”

“We spoke _once_ , and you sought me out in the gardens because, what, you heard me talking? You were wandering around? I don’t understand your persistence, or why we’re even having this conversation. You’ve got tons of henchpeople to talk to.”

“I don’t have henchpeople.” The indignation on Eren’s face is almost funny. “I—if you want to tap out of this so bad, just turn around and walk away, _fuck_ , it’s not like I’m keeping you here.” The hurt comes back, barely tampered down by whatever it is the Prince does when he needs to control something. “No staff, no entourage, no one to correct your disrespectful behaviour.” Eren inhales and it sounds like it’s a little bit painful. “And, just so we’re clear, _you_ talked to _me_ this time.”

It’s the perfect out. It’s the perfect way to fall back into old routines and avoidance methods, the perfect way to speak to the Crown Prince approximately not at all in the immediate future. It’d be _so easy_ to just take this opportunity, bow out, and get back to the way things were—knowing that the Prince existed and knowing that, at one time, he’d been assigned to kill him.

But they’ve met three times in three days. They’ve met three times in three days and there’s something tightening at the corners of Eren’s mouth. It’s only three times in three days. They’ve lived a decade of not talking at all.

But if this was just like every other interaction that Eren had ever had, if this was something that had happened countless times, why the _fuck_ did he look so lonely?

(“ _who are you?_ ”)

“Levi,” pops out of his mouth, rolls across the dirt, and lies between them like a confession.

“What?” When Eren blinks this time, it’s with the fluttering nervousness of surprise.

“You said you didn’t know my name. I fixed that. It’s Levi.”

Another blink, just as fluttered. “Levi.”

Levi nods, once. “Yeah.” He gestures toward the textbook, still open and undisturbed. “So is it a tough read?”

Eren glances down at the book in his lap as if he’d just remembered it was there, and he moves the notebook resting on the lefthand page. A pencil rolls to the side, landing on the stone bench and stopping by the thermos.

“Not really,” Eren tells him after another heartbeat’s pause. “It’s just astrophysics. _The Foundation of Astrophysics_. It’s an introductory text. I have an exam at the end of the week, and I’m trying to finish up this last chapter so I can study my notes.”

“ _Just_ astrophysics,” Levi parrots back, arching both his eyebrows. “Just astrophysics.”

Eren’s mouth curves upward, just a little, and it makes the rabbit-heart inside his chest flutter, in the same way that his laughter in the sunflower field had made it spin against mud. “I like space,” is what he says. “And all of that shit.”

Levi snorts, shaking his head, glancing upward toward the stars, as if they’d had something to do with this entire affair.

When he looks back down, Eren has moved over, pushed himself closer to one of the armrests and his thermos has been placed back onto the ground by his feet. There’s enough empty space beside him that Levi could fit there and not touch him, even barely.

The Prince locks eyes with him.

“Do you want to sit down?” He asks, softly. Levi thinks of the circlet he’d worn this afternoon, the way the white-gold had contrasted with the brown of his skin, the formal clothes with the seafoam trim, thinks of all the staples of his future ascension to the throne. Here, he is still the Crown Prince, still regal, still someone that Levi shouldn’t be speaking to. This is someone he was never _meant_ to speak to, and yet he’s offering him a seat beside him, within the confines of the gardens. Like he’d said—no entourage, none of the Prince’s Guard. No Farlan. No Isabel.

Levi closes the distance between himself and the bench.

And he takes a seat.

(“ _how long have you worked here?_ ” Eren will ask him, after having shut his textbook and set it aside.

“ _ten years, give or take,_ ” Levi will tell him, and it will be the truth, spoken neutrally.

“ _you’re shitting me_ ,” Eren will say, instead of putting the pieces together, instead of recognizing him at all, and for a moment it eases the tension that keeps building within his chest every time Eren looks at him. “ _and i haven’t seen you before?_ ”

“ _there’s a lot of people you don’t see_.” Levi will shrug, a liquid thing. “ _but it looks like that isn’t going to happen anymore, huh._ ”

Eren will watch him and the lamplight will make his eyes glow from the inside out, will make his tattoo look like the sun ablaze, from a certain angle. “ _you think so?_ ”

“ _yeah_ ,” Levi will say and he won’t know why. But his heart will thud against his ribs, a little too hard. “ _i do._ ”)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi closes the short distance between himself and the bench, taking a seat beside Eren with enough space between them to be respectable. It is, like always, dangerous to allow himself these things, to allow the erasure of lines and protocols and precautions. It’s more dangerous still to allow these things to eat at him after only three weeks of touch-and-go meetings, to allow fleeting expressions on Eren’s face to dig fingers into chest and shift things around that don’t need shifting. 
> 
> But here he is, and here Eren is, and here they are together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fact that people read this never ceases to amaze me and i'd like to thank you for doing it, that's for sure

(The sky had been going soft with dawn by the time they’d stopped talking with one another that night, three weeks prior. By the time Levi had made his way back to the staff dormitories, his boots had been damp with the dewdrops that the cosmos and the harebells had left behind, and his clothes had smelled of summer pollen and fresh blooms, but his eyelids hadn’t been heavy with the weight of sleep untaken.

In fact, despite all efforts to make resting as easy as possible with the little time he had left before the palace woke in its entirety, his body just wouldn’t rest.)

Levi wonders, as he has so often recently, how he let himself get in this position. He’d been _so_ fucking careful. He’d had his ears open for any sign of the royal family, specifically the Prince. He’d never let himself quite relax, whether it was in the comfortable quiet of the gardens or the relative safety of the staff quarters.

Perhaps he’s here because he hadn’t thought to protect himself within his own carefully cultivated sunflowers. Perhaps that was when he was at his weakest, when finding Eren—windswept and wearing dirt and pollen like he’d been born to lord over the flowers themselves—would be the most effective.

Perhaps it really is the universe, meddling in Levi’s business in a way he’d never wanted it meddled in.

But that’s not to say that Eren is a _burden_ on his time, or something like that. It’s also not to say that there’s anything particularly off-putting about... whatever-it-is they’re doing now. Most of their interactions are just the two of them, tucked away in the latticed alcove, beneath the creeping phlox, hidden by the scent of cosmos. But there are times that Levi works elsewhere and Eren follows, lounging by the hibiscuses or toying with the stems of brook wakerobin, growing from beside the few bridges scattered among the plants.

When they meet, Eren will talk—about exercises in hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, showing off bruises obtained in each, about homework assignments, about what he takes from the kitchens, about whatever he wants, and Levi will listen.

(Occasionally it will seem like his moments of weakness are growing more frequent. They will find themselves here, or the garden will welcome them elsewhere, and Levi will find himself responding to questions.

“ _what’s this one?_ ” Eren will ask, already crouching to cup his hands around a blossom, his eyes glittering like cut gems, sharp and attentive.

Levi will find himself unable to do anything but answer, crouching beside him.)

It feels _private_ , the fact that they do this, regardless of how little time they’ve been speaking. It feels close, intimate, almost suffocating, like this is outside the boundaries of propriety, because it _is_. What they’re doing is something that doesn’t happen, a mixing of classes in a way that would make even the most liberal of the country’s provinces do a doubletake.

But that doesn’t _stop_ it, their meetings in the gardens. It’s just become a part of the tightness in Levi’s muscles, the gravel in his throat, the nerves that make the hairs on his arms rise in preparation for something that he can’t put his finger on.

And yet despite the storm inside his body, Levi finds that he’s the one speaking first, today. There are no questions to prompt him, nor has Eren dropped the thread of a conversation for him to pick up, to pull on for elaboration. There’s only them, and the flowers, and the sunlight dragging gentle fingers wherever it can reach.

The late afternoon is heavy with the dancing scents of the gardens and with the humidity of imminent summer rain.

“Aren’t you warm in that? I’ve been meaning to ask.” If there were a third party with them, Levi is sure that it would look weird, like he was speaking to the flowers as he plucks away dying blossoms of creeping phlox and tosses them in the basket by his feet. But the Prince shifts on the bench, a sign that he’d heard, and Levi turns to regard him as if he’d directed the question at him from the beginning.

By all rights, Eren _ought_ to be warm in what he’s wearing, regardless of the fabric that the outfit is made out of. But the white button-down shirt isn’t as damp with sweat as Levi feels it ought to be, and the seafoam green vest layered over it is in pristine condition. The grey dress pants are much the same, artfully tucked into black dress boots that barely have a trace of the garden’s dirt upon them. Even the white-gold hemming on the vest seems unperturbed by the summer sun, glinting softly only when Eren breathes.

The only sign that he might be warm at _all_ are his sleeves, rolled up to his elbows, and the single bead of sweat slowly inching its way down the side of Eren’s face from beneath the circlet on his head.

“For sure,” Eren tells him, marking his place in the novel he’d brought into the gardens with a finger. “It’s hot as _fuck_. But it’s better than the _formal_ formalwear. This is just...” He pauses, searching for the words, his eyes flickering back and forth as if he’s going to find what he needs in the air in front of him. His nose wrinkles in a snort when he finds what he’s looking for. “This is just _casualwear_.”

He says that with a downward turn of his lips, his focus wandering across the blossoms tangled in the latticework. His tone almost reeks of quiet distaste, vibrates with the sense of playing an unnecessary game of dress-up. There seem to be a lot of hints like this in the way he speaks, as though displaying his rank this way, as if wearing his family’s colours this way, is a practice he’d rather not participate in.

Levi thinks of the T-shirt and sweatpants that he’d seen Eren in only once. It still feels like a moment that was too personal to be real.

 “So you’re better at keeping your casualwear clean than your formalwear.” Levi turns back to the creeping phlox, trimming away dying patches to make way for new growth.

“That was _one time_.” It’s spoken offhandedly, as if he’d gone back to reading when Levi had turned around. “I didn’t expect to see anyone in the sunflower field. I keep telling you that. If I’d known someone was going to _catch_ me looking like a slob, I’d’ve tried harder to look nice.”

 _you still looked like a prince_ , Levi wants to tell him. Instead he says, “it was twice.”

“What?”

“It was twice. You wore formalwear when we met in the gardens.” It’s a memory that he’s revisited often between then and now, even as it makes him recoil to touch its edges. Something inside his chest always _tightens_ at the way Eren had whispered, almost _reverently_ , ‘ _it’s you_.’ Something happens in his stomach when he thinks of the way Eren’s hair had been a mess, at the way flakes of sawdust had clung to it, at the way he’d had all of the Prince’s attention for no other reason than because he’d _remembered_ him from the sunflower fields and not the echoes of a moment in a dark corridor. It’s almost enough to darken the edges of his vision. “It laced in the back.”

“That _doesn’t_ count.” A huff and the turn of a page. His eyebrows are probably furrowed. “I was in _practice_ formalwear. That’s for _exercise_ , not stuff actually made for impressing the public. It’s just made in the same style.”

“ _Excuse_ me,” Levi replies, flicking his fingers to drop more creeping phlox blossoms into the basket. “Sorry that I can’t tell the difference between formalwear. I’ll be sure to inform your tailor that I’ll _never_ be volunteering in his service, Your Highness.”

Eren snorts, a quiet thing, and it’s followed by laughter, just as soft. The dampness of the air around them makes everything seem louder than it ought to be. There’s the sound of another page turning beneath it, and Levi feels like a whisper against the back of his neck, a gentle sigh. It’s a physical thing, with humidity like this. Everything has a presence in the summertime.

A thin line of sweat makes its way down the back of Levi’s neck.

“So, besides harassing me about my palace etiquette, what else is on your agenda today?” He turns once more to watch Eren, dusting off his gloves above the basket, paying the remnants of the phlox little mind as they flutter from his palms.

“What else would I rather do?” A smile teases the corners of Eren’s mouth and his index finger once more marks his place in his novel. It’s only after Levi arches one eyebrow that he continues, the hint of a smile falling away, “I have business with the Queen later. We’re to discuss affairs of state before next month’s meetings with the provincial Governors.” The language he uses is achingly formal, a parroting of something that’s been told to him in exactly the same way.

Eren lets his eyes wander, lets them flicker to the side, taking in the curves of the alcove. On anyone else, it would look like an admiration of the plant life clinging to the finely crafted latticework. But Levi is coming to find that the Prince isn’t quite like anyone else—inside the royal family or outside of it.

“Sounds like that’ll keep you busy,” Levi says, dropping his gloves beside the basket and wiping the sweat on his palms against his pants. His hands come away with a little bit of dirt, marking him as much a part of the gardens as the flowers themselves. “Unless you manage to wander off again.”

“I can’t.” Eren shifts again on the bench, dropping his boots to rest his heels on the ground as he stretches out his legs. The novel takes a place right beside him, wedged between the armrest and his hip. “But that doesn’t mean anything _important_ is going to happen. She’s going to tell me shit I already know. Rarely is it ever a discussion. It’s _always_ more like a debriefing.”

The air is getting heavier, and Levi doesn’t know how to fix that. He can see the hair at Eren’s temples glisten. “So you’ve got spies traipsing around the country too?”

That makes Eren blink at him, makes his eyebrows arch toward his circlet, makes the tattoo on his forehead rise like the sun it’s supposed to represent. The flowers around them almost tremble, seeking out sunlight. It’s almost like watching the sunflowers bow to the boy who will be King.

“I don’t have spies,” Eren tells him. “I ask my—“ there’s a pause, a hitch in his breath that’s only _just_ noticeable, and then, “—friends. Armin’s the grandson of his province’s Governor, so he hears everything. Mikasa, too. But, uh, different province.” He leans against the back of the stone bench with a straight spine, crossing his ankles, as if talking about business itself warrants a change in posture. “And I get some things from Historia. She assumed the throne in our neighboring country. I went to her wedding last year.”

(For a moment, Levi wonders if anything will happen on his face at the entirely benign reference to the Reiss line as he remembers the despot who ruled before the newest Queen. He waits, holding his breath, his heart knocking so hard against his ribs that he can feel it in his ears. He waits—but Eren never forms a question, doesn’t ask after any knots in Levi’s gut.

Just like he doesn’t hear the whisper of metal against gravel, all contained within a voice that says, “ _i’ve got a job for you._ ”)

Eren—at once the source of all these memories and the one that keeps them at bay—continues speaking, pushing back murmurs from too long ago, chasing away the smell of mildew growing between stones. “And then there’s the palace staff that I talk to, and they always have really hot gossip. It’s the same everywhere. Since I can’t go anywhere by myself, I ask staff members about things, and once they get past the whole—“ Eren gestures to himself, waving his hand in an almost-ridiculous gesture, and Levi’s ghosts are gone, “—thing, they really like talking.”

Levi finds himself smiling, just a little, and the only thing he can taste when he speaks are summertime and the perfume of flowers. “The whole Prince thing, you mean?”

There’s nothing soft in the line of Eren’s mouth when he tries a smile on, and the urge to backpedal out of this conversation makes his stomach twist. But when Eren looks at him, there’s nothing like judgement hanging on his face, nothing that accuses Levi of having crossed a line he shouldn’t have.

“Yeah,” Eren says, the sun dappled on the toes of his boots, on the side of his face. His eyes catch the light and play with it, as if it had been born inside his irises all along. “The whole Prince thing.”

And the only thing Eren looks right then is lonely. 

(He thinks of the way the Guardsman had positioned himself around Eren in the gardens weeks before, thinks of the way that Jean had stopped talking when Eren had lifted his hand, thinks of the way people bow when he walks by, the way they keep their eyes on the floor beneath them.

He thinks of the way Eren had sounded when he’d said “ _do we know each other?_ ” Thinks of how sharp those words had been, how he’d said Levi could leave any time he wanted.

He thinks of how there are always lines between the Prince and everyone else.

Just like it should be. Just like it’s always been.

“ _do you want to sit down?_ ” Eren had asked him, his words soft and close and carefully placed.

By then, Levi supposes he’d already committed to crossing lines.)

He closes the short distance between himself and the bench, taking a seat beside Eren with enough space between them to be respectable. It is, like always, dangerous to allow himself these things, to allow the erasure of lines and protocols and precautions. It’s more dangerous still to allow these things to eat at him after only three weeks of touch-and-go meetings, to allow fleeting expressions on Eren’s face to dig fingers into chest and shift things around that don’t need shifting.

But here he is, and here Eren is, and here they are together.

“Anyway,” Eren clears his throat, the formality of his posture still present even as the sharp corners of his face round themselves out when he keeps speaking, “it’s just going to be a lot of touching base. Like, I’m pretty sure the Queen Regent wants to talk about the rumors involving the development of projectile weapons across the sea to the West.” When Eren shrugs, it’s like liquid, contrary to the directness of his speech. It’s a vestige of his royal training. “It was a failure, like every other one, but it’s also a violation of, like, _every_ treaty ever made, so.”  

“Should you really be talking politics with me?” Levi asks him, flicking the dried remnants of plantlife from his jeans. “Especially something that sounds as series as _affairs of state_. That’s way above my paygrade, Your Highness.”

Eren’s eyes dance over him then, a little more vibrant now that they’re closer, and his boots shift on the dirt as the shape of his body changes. The column of his spine stays straight, but his shoulders drop, just a little. The angle of his head tips only slightly to the side, and it turns the shape of his mouth into something a little mischievous, a smile flirting with his mouth as if the loneliness from moments ago had never been.

Levi finds himself unable to look away.

“What, like you’re going to tell your gardening club about the sociopolitical climate of Samudr? For _fun?_ ”

His throat is dry enough to compete with the soil on his thighs, with the hints of it on his hands, when he says, “now that you know about those meetings, you’re going to be a wanted man.”

There’s a moment where Eren processes, the sentence undergoing inspection inside his head. But then he laughs, loudly, and the flowers around them hold the sound close so it can’t escape the alcove. Maybe the leaves love it too much to let it go, because when he laughs, he does it with his whole _body_ , much as he had in the sunflower field, and it brings a colour to his cheeks that warms the brown of his skin into something golden.

“Oh _no_ ,” Eren wheezes, the mess of his hair falling over his circlet even as it glitters in the summer sun. “I’ll have a group of _militant gardeners_ after me too!”

Levi rolls his eyes hard enough for the world to rock, but there’s a part of him that shivers. Ice collects around his heart and makes his chest tight. There are questions he could ask to pretend it didn’t phase him—what the fuck, really, is a militant gardener? Gnomes with pitchforks and hand-shovels? But he can’t manage to form either of those, and when he speaks his breath manages to chill the inside of his mouth. 

“Do you _always_ talk so flippantly about that sort of shit?”

It takes a moment for Eren to gather himself, for him to put back together the person that could speak properly. But when he looks back at Levi’s face his eyes are still dancing. Just like a smile is still playing with his lips when he says, “about what?”

“People trying to kill you.”

A brittle expression flits across Eren’s face for a heartbeat, there and gone again like something Levi had imagined, like a ripple of motion beneath a frozen pond. The pond’s surface cracks at the edges near Eren’s mouth when he begins to speak.

“People have been trying to kill me almost as long as I’ve been able to walk,” he says. “How else am I supposed to talk about it?”

(The candidness that Levi appreciates so much is making him supremely uncomfortable just then, eating at him slowly and making his stomach churn. He thinks of the people who have been hunting the Prince since his birth. He thinks about how he’d been one of them.

He wishes he could stop thinking.)

There’s a pause between them, punctuated by the rumble of distant thunder, the sunlight that had dappled against Eren’s face having been obscured by clouds ready to burst. In the sun’s absence, the cosmos at the base of the lattice turn their faces toward Eren’s body, craving something warm and bright. And there’s nothing that fits that demand quite like the presence of royalty.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Eren asks, his body turned toward Levi in a mirror of the cosmos toward him. It’s unintentional, certainly, and the parallel is in aesthetic only, rather than in symbolism—and yet Levi has rarely ever felt as important as when Eren speaks to him.

Talking to Eren is a lot like flying too close to the sun. Levi wonders when his luck will run out and the wax on his wings will melt.

His throat is dry when he says, “I just think you’re not concerned enough with your own welfare.”

Eren’s snort gets swallowed by another murmur of thunder, flitting between the clouds beyond the palace walls. “You sound like my mother.”

“Maybe your mother sounds like me.”

Eren’s laughter probably finds its way into the clouds with how vibrant it is. It reaches with searching fingers, tickling the edges of the creeping phlox, toys with the cosmos blossoms by their boots. It drags itself through the gray of the sky, splitting it down the middle and opening it up just enough to coax the first droplets of rain into the gardens.

One of them lands right in the middle of Eren’s forehead, just above the sunburst that declares his rank, and Levi thinks his stupid poetic notions are running away with him faster than he’d like. 

“Shit,” Eren says, his voice still tight with laughter swallowed too-soon, as the rain begins to sigh softly against the foliage. Raindrops cling to his hair like dew, hold onto his eyelashes like stars, and everything smells like life and rain and cosmos. It’s enough to make Levi’s head swim, the needling of the rain prickling at his skin just a little too closely, the sensation crawling just a little too deep toward his bones.

“Shit,” Levi agrees, his hair going flat under the weight of rainwater even as he tries to shake it out. The basket of the dead phlox blossoms is still resting beside the latticework, the plant waste inside it catching and holding the water like a sponge. It’s going to be a fucking _mess_ to carry, and there’s no way that it won’t leave a trail of small puddles between here and the compost fills. It’s something Levi resigns himself to, much as he resigns himself to leaving a trail of water himself as he makes his way back to the staff dormitory.

(He’d smelled the rain, had felt it coming, beading against his skin in the form of sweat, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to cut whatever-this-is short, despite brevity being at the heart of a great deal of their conversations.)

A flicker of motion outside the increasing patter of the rain pulls Levi out of his own head, puts the tightness in his chest on hold, and catches his attention, clinging to it. What happens next occurs in slow motion, dries out Levi’s throat even as rainwater keeps falling from his eyelashes and onto his cheeks, obscuring his vision in bits and pieces.

But he can see well enough Eren unbuttoning his vest with deft fingers, evidence of years of practice, can see as he shrugs it off of his shoulders in a movement that’s just as seamless, just as lacking in hesitation. Levi also has no trouble seeing Eren stand, has no trouble seeing as he spreads his vest open between his arms, has no trouble watching Eren lean closer, lean down, to hold it over Levi’s head in a superficial covering that makes him only marginally less wet than he would be without it.

“Are you coming?” Levi watches as Eren’s mouth bends around the question, notes the way raindrops tremble above his Cupid’s Bow, the way they cling to his eyebrows, his eyelashes, his cheeks.

“That’s a really expensive umbrella,” Levi says, trying to pretend that this isn’t the closest that they’ve ever been, that this is something that normal people do. He pretends that this isn’t the angle a camera would use to look at Eren if this were a movie. He pretends that this isn’t the cinematic moment where one of them would fall in love with the other, with the way the rainwater makes tracks against the Prince’s skin, with the way his hair is falling over his circlet and against his eyebrows in something almost artful enough to be offensive.

Levi pretends this isn’t something that the flowers would whisper about, if they were able.

“Leave the basket,” Eren tells him as if he’d been reading his mind, or his face. His novel is tucked into the waistband of his pants, the pages already going dark with water damage. One of the cover’s corners is curling in distress. “It’ll be here tomorrow.”

“It’s going to be disgusting tomorrow.”

“It’s going to be wet right now.”

Levi licks his lips and tastes rainwater, weighing his options for a breath between heartbeats before he pushes himself off the bench, still beneath the cover of Eren’s vest, regardless of its almost-indiscernible value as an umbrella.

Their strides are uneven as they jog down the packed dirt, already gathering puddles, toward the closest awning that marks the palace itself. Eren is just half-a-step behind, an awkward shape as he tries to keep his vest over them both and succeeding only in keeping Levi slightly less wet than he would otherwise be.

It’s a laughable gesture that twists something beneath Levi’s ribs and threatens to choke him as they come to a stop underneath the slope of a roof, covering one of the open-air walkways that are so common in this place.

The gardens are almost obscured by the sheet of driving rain that the one-or-two droplets from before had become. The only indication that there are plants behind the rain at all are the leaves pressed to the stone floor of the walkway beneath their feet and the dancing light of the garden streetlamps trying to cut through the sudden gloom.

“That was refreshing,” Eren’s breathless, a little, as he shrugs his vest back on over the shirt that’s now plastered to his body. His fingers make quick work of the buttons, a skill that probably makes the formalwear he hates so much even _more_ bothersome, and he smooths a hand down his chest to ease the wrinkles out of the fabric.

(Eren’s hair is pushed back from his forehead, but there are still raindrops hanging on for dear life to his eyelashes. Even soaking wet, there’s no mistaking Eren for anyone other than the Prince. Even at ten years old. Even in sweatpants and university clothes.

Even laughing in the gardens.)

“You look like you got caught at the wrong end of a firehose,” Levi tells the rain in front of them, making Eren only a shadow in his peripheral vision. The pause that follows is just this side of too-long before he remembers to add, “Your Highness.”

“That’s eloquent.”

Levi pitches his voice just a little higher, cuts Eren a glance that brings a smile to his own lips. “What was it you said? ‘The gardens look... nice.’”

Color rises hard and fast to shade the hollows of Eren’s cheeks and his mouth twists with embarrassment. “That was a low blow.”

Levi finds himself laughing, finds that the chill digging into his skin doesn’t bother him that much just then. “You went there first. That was _all_ you just now.”

Eren shifts, huffing, and his eyes don’t drop away from Levi’s face. His posture is all controlled lines and careful placement of bodyweight, and the distance between them is well within the limits of etiquette and propriety. But there’s something sitting there between them, beneath the depths of how the two of them are supposed to interact with one another.

The rain hisses on the walkway’s roof.

“Thank you.” Eren gives voice to this... thing. To this stolen moment. To his laughter, twice lived, and to the prying questions that had been asked. It’s unadorned and exactly like him. “For today. It was fun.”

“You always say that,” Levi replies. He can feel a line of rainwater crawling beneath his boot and down the back of his calf. “You must have pretty low standards.” 

For a moment, it feels like the sun has come out, a small, soft smile resting itself upon Eren’s lips making the rain and the numbness in Levi’s fingers feel like the memory of a memory of a dream. And, like so much else, that feeling is dangerous. No, it’s worse than dangerous. It’s _crippling_ , it smacks of weakness, reeks of hesitance from ten years prior.

And, in that moment, Levi is unerringly grateful for it.

“I always mean it,” Eren says, just as soft as his smile. “And I like to think my standards are pretty high.”

With that, the Prince straightens his clothes one last time, shakes his hair out before pushing it back from his forehead again, and wiggles his eyebrows beneath his circlet. The tightness in Levi’s chest comes back full-force.

“I’ve got a meeting. I’ll have a report for your gardening club at some point.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Levi finds himself laughing, breathing in the rain and the muted presence of the gardens. “Fuck off. Leave before the Queen sends someone to come find you and drag you by the seat of your pants.”

Eren’s own laughter wafts backwards as he walks away, echoing between the stone and the gardens as if neither place can hold onto it for long just then. Even the rain seems to quiet down, aware of the power held inside a sound like that.

Levi stands there, watching, until his body starts to shake with the chill.

(“ _what’re you thinking about?_ ” Isabel asks him after a too long shower that had been too hot. The skin beneath the towel, wrapped around his shoulders, is still red, and it itches when he turns his head to look at her. Farlan watches them both from his place beside her on the floor, both his eyebrows arched, looking like glowworms in the low light afforded by the bedside lamp.

“ _what?_ ” Levi clears his throat, and even _that_ makes his skin feel too tight. He’s never taken a shower quite that warm before.

“ _you’re distracted,_ ” Farlan tells him, pulling out his words like taffy for effect. “ _did you catch a wittle cold while you were in the gardens?_ ”

“ _you say little like that again and you’re no longer welcome in my humble abode,_ ” Levi replies, leaning back on one hand, the mattress bending beneath his weight. “ _but no, i’m not sick. i left a wastebasket outside and it’s going to be disgusting tomorrow._ ”

“ _leave it to you to make gossip as boring as possible_ ,” Isabel sighs, her flare for the dramatic evident in the way she drops herself flat to the floor, out of Levi’s sight. The rain whispers against the stone outside, almost muted entirely, though the dorms are placed at the backmost corners of the palace.

Levi doesn’t know how to tell her that when he holds his breath, he can hear the soft static rainwater against the gardens’ leaves and feel the echo of Eren’s laughter.

And so, true to boring, uninteresting form, he doesn’t say anything at all.)

-

(Eren has always had a habit of wandering around the palace when he ought to be in bed. When he was younger—much younger—it had always been his stomach that had driven him to the kitchens, still half-asleep but starving. The stone floor had always been cold, where it hadn’t been padded by a thick rug, and the chill would usually be enough to have him conscious enough to eat by the time he got where he was going.

When he was ten, it was at the beginning of one of those journeys that someone had come to kill him. He’d been half-asleep and unaware. The person had been just a shadow, then, and the palace guard on duty had been frozen by something invisible. It couldn’t’ve been fear, Eren had thought at the time. Hannes had always said that guards were meant to never be afraid of anything, when he was sober enough to comment on things like that.

“ _who are you_?” Eren had asked the shadow, still two years away from the chef-assistant’s ghost that would one day haunt him.

Whatever the shadow had said to him hadn’t been memorable—and that’s if the shadow had said anything at all.)

The rain makes him restless.

It’s only his imagination that he can hear it, as deep within the palace as he is, but the too-loud rattling against the doors of his balcony and the too-close thunder had chased him from his chambers and toward the kitchens, empty thermos in his hands.

Or maybe the noise is just an excuse. Maybe it’s the caffeine addiction.

Maybe it’s the itching beneath his skin.

Whatever the cause or motivation, Eren had left his quarters through the hallway behind his bookcase, leaving both Annie and Jean behind to watch an empty bedroom. They probably know that it’s empty, just like they probably know where he’s going, but neither of them have made any move to follow him. It’s something he appreciates when they’re on shift for this sort of thing. It gives him a little more breathing room.

His sneakers echo less in the back corridors and staff hallways, and it makes the palace seem less huge. It also makes sound travel faster, makes even small noises obvious in the closeness, and the sigh of silk brings Eren up short.

It doesn’t really surprise him when his mother comes into view as Eren rounds a corner. Only so many people wear silk in the palace, and only so many people know the staff pathways like he does. There isn’t a lot of overlap between the two categories.

A cowl, embroidered in silver and seafoam green, is pulled up over her loose hair, her loose nightclothes made of silver silk. Like always, she looks elegant and flawless, imposing even in an outfit made for bedchambers. But, made for bedchambers or not, everything the Queen Regent adorns is made for royalty, and there is never a moment where someone would be struck down for seeing her vulnerable.

As Eren drops his eyes and bows in respect, he chalks it up as another difference between the two of them. There have been a lot of those, lately.

“Your Majesty,” Eren says to the floor and to the thermos held between his hands. “Did you want to see me, or are you making a habit of skulking around the palace, too?”

“We don’t skulk in our own home,” his mother replies, all good humor and quiet mischief, avoiding the fact that he’d left his nightshift Guards back at his quarters. This version of his mother is someone he’s been hearing less as he’s gotten older, less still as he’s come into more responsibilities. It feels weird to hear it now, even if it’s just the two of them in this hallway. “We peruse.”

Eren snorts despite himself, straightening his spine to regard her. “Okay. Were you perusing your way to the kitchens, or were you looking for me?” He notices, like he had earlier today during their audience, that he’s taller than her now. He certainly doesn’t feel that way.

“I was making sure you didn’t catch your death after getting caught in the gardens this afternoon,” the Queen tells him, the royal-referential _we_ dropping out of her speech to be replaced by concern. Her voice is an echo of distant thunder, even though it touches the walls like a sigh. “You seemed to bring the rain in with you with how wet you were.”

“ _That_ would be embarrassing.” The wall sconces, set at certain intervals, give the close hallway a steady light source, even if one of the bulbs is going dim near the end of the corridor behind her. “All these people spending _years_ going after the heir, only to have him done in by pneumonia. Or _,_ even _worse_ , a simple _cold_.”

“ _Eren_ ,” the edges of his mother’s voice go for the jugular and fail.

“ _Mother_.” It’s a reflexive response to her when she gets ready to scold him like this. He just doesn’t really know where he’d learned it, or how long it had been a part of him. “But I’m fine. No sniffles, no headaches. Just looking for some coffee.”

There’s a moment where she deliberates between another attempt at scolding him and letting it go, a conflict she seems to be going through so often recently. The emotion that’s twisting her mouth just then is a reminder of Levi from the gardens, the way his eyebrows had arched when Eren had spoken about the endless amount of attempts on his life. But her face relaxes and her eyebrows unfurrow, smoothing out the sunburst tattoo on her forehead, so much like Eren’s own. It’s as if the struggle had never taken place anywhere but inside her.

“Aren’t you a little underdressed for the occasion?” Her lips twitch upward as if the interruption to her smile had never happened.

Eren tries to match her humor and finds himself succeeding. It’s been a while since they’ve had a moment like this. It feels like it’s been a longer still since he’s felt like her son before her heir. “Yikes,” he says, turning his thermos slowly between his hands. “What will people think when they see me in this year’s pinup calendar?”

The Queen Regent hides quiet laughter behind her hand and her eyebrows arch. “Please tell me you at least charged something for your contribution?”

“Nah,” Eren shrugs. “I’m a giver. I did it for the hell of it.”

This laugh is louder, barely contained by her fingers, and she shakes her head. Her hair, almost hidden beneath her cowl, shifts behind her. “Be sure to get some sleep tonight. I’ve been told you haven’t been resting.” A chiding finger comes out from beneath one of her sleeves. “And don’t let anyone catch you in those clothes. It’s not befitting of a prince.”

Eren wonders if his mother feels it as the moment they had splits down the middle and disappears.

(“ _you don’t sound a whole lot like a prince,_ ” the chef’s assistant had said. Eren had been thirteen years old, on his first excursion outside the palace ever. Everything had been so new, then, and the rules that he’d been given had felt safe, not having had the time to turn into the chains of fear.

“ _i sound like myself_ ,” Eren had told him, had felt himself bristle at such an accusation. “ _and i’m a prince. so i sound like a prince._ ”

The assistant had laughed, his skin going pink and hiding his freckles, still a couple days away from going purple and then pallid as he gasps for breath and finding none.

“ _i guess so_ ,” he’d said, “ _but you sure do swear a lot_.”)

“A prince is born a prince,” Eren tells the empty corridor, his mother having turned around and made her way back to the chambers she shared with the King Consort, her slippered feet leaving not even an echo to speak to in her wake. “So whatever I choose to wear befits me.”

It feels petulant to say, even with no one around to hear it. But it also feels _better_ when it’s not sitting in his throat and clawing at his windpipe, makes it easier to resume his walk toward the kitchens. He takes a turn that his mother hadn’t and lets his words stay behind, where no one else will need to know he’d said them. What _isn’t_ befitting of a prince, after all, is a tantrum.

The side-room to the main kitchens is silent when Eren pushes through one of the two entryways, pushing a short half-curtain out of his way. The staff don’t begin preparing for breakfast for a couple more hours yet, and so it’s just him, the shadows, and the coffeepot’s digital clock glowing across the room beckoning him over.

A switch behind the coffeepot casts the countertop in a sharp fluorescent glow, making the darkness around the rest of the kitchen seem thicker. It undulates around him, reaching out tendrils toward his sneakers, and Eren pays them approximately no mind as he reaches for the carafe, filled with just enough coffee for his thermos.

It smells fresh, no more than fifteen minutes old, and breathing it in makes him feel just a _little_ bit more like a person. Warmth starts from his chest and flows outward, and it’s like summer ghosting over surface of his bones.

He reminds himself, as he twists the lid onto his thermos and flicks off the light beneath the cabinets, that he needs to thank kitchen staff in the morning, like he always does. It’s something to look forward to—the breakfast smells and the things he can get away with pilfering, the chiding voices and palace gossip that dance between the staff members and flicker between the scents of baking bread and fresh fruit. It’s one of the things that pulls him up and out of bed some mornings, the barely-there sleep from the night before still hanging around his shoulders.

The half-curtain whispers back into place as he leaves the kitchens behind him, coffee in hand.

As Eren gets closer to one of the main corridors, the wall sconces get larger and brighter, and the shadows they cast keep him company as he walks. It’s an exercise in caution, all this sneaking around his own home. There’s a pause at the mouth of every hallway to peek around corners and make sure no staff or stewards or petitioners are wandering around so late at night. Even guards are better off avoided, what with their open access to the Queen Regent’s ear and her warning against getting caught in such _unbecoming_ clothes.

He washes out the sulfuric taste that rises to his mouth with a scalding sip from his thermos.

It’s only after Eren gets to a corridor lined with windows that he notices that the rain has stopped. It had still been hissing in his ears, deep inside his head, but seeing the nighttime stillness uninterrupted makes the palace feel almost silent. When he pauses beside a set of unguarded wooden double-doors it’s just him and the humming of the lightbulbs in the wall fixtures.

The door clicks back shut after he slips through it, shifting his thermos from one hand to the other to get a proper grip, and he shuts his eyes against the smell of freshly fallen rain and the muted hints of flowers as they brush across his cheeks.

The rain makes him restless. But nothing soothes that away like the world _after_ it rains.

His pace begins to slow a little on the stone walkway as he follows the sighs and whispers of garden flowers away from the palace proper. The itching beneath his skin that had chased him from his chambers falls back, twists sharply, and disappears, leaving his body a little empty, makes sleep seem a little more wise.

He rounds a corner, already catching the soft patter of leftover rainwater dripping from leaves and petals, and almost expects to see Levi there, leaned against one of the columns that support the pavilion’s roof. It’s an expectation that almost draws Eren up short, makes him hesitate as he takes a step toward the stairs, and he can picture this unreal moment so vividly that it feels more like a _memory_ than anything else.

( _“we’ve got to stop meeting like this_ ,” Levi might say, keeping his eyes forward and watching the moonlight dance between what the rain had left behind, glittering against the droplets before they dry come morning. He’d be wearing what he always wears—a button-down accented with the royal colors, emblazoned over the left breast with the royal family’s coat of arms, tucked into work pants made of rough denim, and all of it stained with faded memories of dirt and soil. “ _i never have time to dress up._ ”

Eren would laugh, because Levi always does that, makes him feel a little less responsible, a little less sharp. Or maybe that’s not the best way to put it. Perhaps it’s better to say that Levi is adept at making him feel a little more human, most days.

“ _isn’t that a better reason to keep meeting like this?_ ” Eren would say, and that’s when Levi would look at him, and his eyes would glow like cloud cover backlit by the moon. This is something that Eren doesn’t have to imagine or falsify—he’s seen that with his own two eyes. “ _i’m dressed-down._ ”

Maybe Levi’s eyes would flicker up and down Eren’s frame just then, and maybe his cheeks would go pink with... something. It’s not a great many people that see him dressed so vulnerably, and maybe there’s a part of Eren that craves a reaction like that.

Levi would smile, though, regardless. Probably, anyway. And the nighttime would sigh against his face and smooth out the jut of his cheekbones. Eren’s heart would thud against the inside of his chest.

That is something he doesn’t have to imagine either.)

Eren swallows and another mouthful of coffee leaves a burning stripe down his throat, settling in his stomach and doing nothing to soothe the riot there. But his hesitation is over, his guts twisted or not, and he makes his way down the short set of steps into the garden proper, leaving the figment of a conversation behind him, trapped beneath the palace awning and out of his sight, if not entirely out of mind.

The packed dirt of the garden path has been pressed so tightly into place that not even the rain had loosened it enough to turn it to mud. Instead, puddles sit in the center, or have gathered within the flowers, collecting moonlight as if it, too, were left behind by the rain. Flower petals drift between the flickering light stop the water, pulled from their blossoms by the length of the summer storm, unperturbed by their new place within the gardens.

More petals have gathered down the path, and even in the light of the spaced-out streetlamps Eren can see the colours of the flowers they’d lived on, scattered pastel pinks and purples resting alongside peppered spots of yellow and white. Maybe he doesn’t know precisely _what_ flower each had belonged to, but he can appreciate the soft quality they give the gardens, tossed around like they are.

While he can’t place each petal, he can admire the flowers stretching along the path and around a curve, toward the sound of the stream that cuts through the gardens, louder now with the rainwater pushing it on its way. Sugar bowl flowers line this route’s entryway, nodding their heavy blossoms to the ground. Behind those, closer to the hedges that separate the pathways, clusters of farewell-to-spring wave slightly in the breeze that Eren makes as he walks by. He remembers pointing to each of these at least two weeks before and remembers Levi humoring every question.

At the time, Eren had thought that he’d known the gardens like the back of his hands. He’d figured out that the only thing he really knew about them as the paths that navigated them and approximately nothing else.

(“ _okay, so, as it stands, my gameshow score is in the negatives somewhere, but i think i know what these are,_ ” Eren had said at some point these past weeks, much closer to the night that the sun had caught them talking in the gardens.  

“ _you do?_ ” Levi had asked, leaning against one of the gazebo’s columns, pulling his eyes away from the orange honeysuckle clinging to the lattice that Eren had wandered out of only a few days before, almost breathless, the whisper of “ _it’s you_ ” about to hang between them. “ _give me your best guest, your highness_.”

“ _the perennial sunflowers_.” Eren had crouched, had thumbed over the soft surface of the blossom’s petals as gently as he could. “ _the ones i talked about in the field before_.”

Something had flickered across Levi’s face, there and gone again before Eren could even think of a question to ask. “ _you_ are _good_ ,” Levi had told him, and his voice had been soft. It had almost been enough to make goosebumps rise along the ridges of Eren’s spine. When he speaks that way now, it _is_ enough to do that to him. “ _but what_ kind _of perennial sunflowers are they?_ ”

He’d paused, had looked up at Levi who was looking down at him, their difference in rank entirely irrelevant in that moment, though their positions were enough to shame his mother or any other regent into an early grave.

“ _i don’t know_ ,” Eren had told him, as honestly as he could, and Levi had taken a seat on the gazebo’s stairs, resting his forearms on his knees. “ _think you could tell me?_ ”

A smile had touched Levi’s lips and he’d said, “ _i think i can do that, yeah. trying to flip the pop quiz?_ ”

“ _just keeping you on your toes_ ,” Eren had replied. Levi’s smile had gotten wider, and Eren’s ears had gone so warm that he wondered if the sun had started to burn them, as if it crept closer to watch them, peering over the palace walls.)

More memories tickle the back of his skull, teasing out the hints of laughter and calls of surrender, all of them was years ago when he’d been much smaller, when he’d been satisfied with his place inside the palace walls. He’d played hide-and-seek with his mother, here. He’d played with his caretaker, and his friends. Armin had gotten lost, his first time—had hidden in one of the gazebos until Eren and Mikasa had found him, playing with the largest bumblebee any of them had ever seen.

Eren takes another sip of coffee, this one much cooler than the first few, and past backs away from him as he keeps walking.  The wooden footbridge over the gardens’ stream is beaded over with water, the streetlamps turning them into liquid gold until he crosses over them, blotting out the light, and in a couple more strides, he leaves the chatter of the stream behind him, too.

Something a lot like snowcover comes alive as he takes a sharper corner, the path continuing past another tucked away alcove, this one having one of the few gazebos scattered over the expanse of the gardens. It’s a shrub that he hasn’t yet learned the name to, and he makes another note in his head to ask Levi about it tomorrow. It’s blossoms are pink enough to be almost white, and the storm has scattered enough petals to make the summer flowers sing of wintertime, the petal-fall stretching all the way toward the gazebo’s steps. No other flowers are planted in this hideaway. Eren makes a note to ask about that, too.

The inside of the gazebo is dry when Eren finds a place to sit, the decorative streetlamp at his back making his shadow stretch almost across the wooden floor, the shadow of his thermos an almost intimidating shape beside him.

It’s quiet, out here.

It’s quiet, and Eren feels a little foolish, sitting in a gazebo alone, regardless of how many times he’d done this before. But before, it had been a sort of refuge, an escape from having to sleep and wake up and face the fact that there are people and there is royalty, and one cannot be both at the same time. Now, it just feels... lonely. The gardens feel _lonely_ when it’s just him, and he can’t decide if that’s something to be applauded or recoiled from.

But maybe it’s not the gardens. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe he just feels silly for sitting out here and expecting Levi, as if he doesn’t have his own life and his own friends, that Eren had seen with his own two eyes. Expecting Levi to be here as if _he_ doesn’t need to sleep, as if _his_ early schedule doesn’t center around the palace’s pulse. As if his schedule is less important.

Maybe it’s just that. The balancing between person and Prince.

Or maybe—

“I was ninety-five percent certain you’d be out here.” Eren almost lurches forward, barely keeping any sense of regal decorum, years of habit and conditioning or not. His grip on his decorum loosens even further when he sees Levi there, ascending the gazebo’s steps. His clothes are different, and there’s a part of Eren that’s grateful that he’d changed. Keeping wet clothes on too long is just encouraging a cold to take root. “Do you ever sleep, Your Highness?”

“I don’t know,” Eren tells him, and he thinks his heart might be racing. “Do _you?_ Don’t you have to get up soon?” He _knows_ it’s racing when Levi takes a seat beside him, even though they’d sat this close only hours before, talking about militant gardeners and attempted assassinations. It’s the closest he’s ever gotten to admitting he was scared, he thinks. The flowers’ perfume had made his head heavy, probably. Had made his lips loose and turned his brain to jelly. He’d almost told Levi that he was _scared_ sometimes, and they’d been just as close then as they are now.

It was the flowers, obviously. But a case could be made that it was the proximity between them, too.

“I had rounds to do.” Levi cuts him a glance, then, and it reminds him of the summer sky from this afternoon—all rainclouds and the threat of a storm. But they’re warm, still, in a way that Eren can’t explain with an atmospheric metaphor. If he’d had his astronomy textbook with him, he’s sure that he could find something to describe them _outside_ the atmosphere. “Had to make sure that my coalition of militant gardeners wasn’t about to start shit.”

Eren finds himself laughing, even though there are questions waiting in line upon his tongue for acknowledgement. _How do you do this?_ Eren wants to know. _How do you make this easy, even when you and I both know you don’t really want to be here?_

There’s a selfish man in Eren Jaeger, certainly. It comes from having royal blood. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to _know_ —it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to see how Levi’s mind works, to see how _all_ of this works, to figure out exactly how Levi can find and pull at weaknesses Eren hadn’t even known he’d had.

The questions almost tumble from behind his teeth when he catches his breath. They almost scatter across the wood and run amok between them. And Levi almost opens his mouth to answer, except—

(Eren jerks awake and Levi isn't beside him.

 _“you know,_ ” Jean says, crouched across from him, making their difference in stature as small as possible out of respect for their ranks. His eyes are averted for the same reason, ignoring Eren’s clothes for both their benefit. “ _generally when people get sleepy, they find a bed._ ”

He can almost taste the questions that had been sitting in his mouth, even as he begins to forget them. “ _i wasn’t tired. i just sat_ down _. i was restless. fuck off_.”

Jean huffs a breath, and it sounds a lot like the put-upon sigh that has been following Eren around for much of his life. Caretakers and babysitters. Members of the Prince’s Guard and the palace guards themselves. The Queen Regent herself.

“ _well, now that the restlessness has worn you out, go to bed. the shifts are about to change._ ”

Jean stands first, offering out a hand. It’s a breach of protocol that neither of them talk about, the habit built out of Jean being kicked to the sawdust and Eren offering his assistance out of reflex. It’s... different, having the roles reversed. Eren hasn’t been knocked on his ass and kept there for years, now.

The thermos comes with him in his free hand, and he dusts the seat of his sweatpants clean with the palm that Jean lets go.

“ _you should thank me_ ,” Jean tells him as he takes the gazebo’s steps first, with Eren following behind. There’s a hesitance in his steps, the tendrils of sleep still clinging to his ankles and trying to hold him in place. “ _i just saved you from the most uncomfortable neck pain come morning._ ”

“ _i dreamt of something_ ,” Eren ignores him, just like Jean had probably expected he would. “ _i don’t remember what it was, but i think someone told a joke_.”

“ _it was me_ ,” Jean glances over his shoulder and Eren struggles to hold onto his dream with both hands. “ _hey, i am the_ funniest _person you know_.”

“ _that is the funniest joke you’ve ever told me. and yet i’m not laughing._ ”

Jean’s indignation is loud enough that not even the gardens can hold onto the sound completely, the leaves doing the best they can to muffle it. It’s loud enough, in fact, that Eren’s dream disappears with a sigh, breathed out on a chuckle, Jean’s theatrics almost too much for so late at night.

He finishes his coffee when his sneakers hit the stone steps out of the gardens. It’s gone cold by then.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Levi were to squint and tilt his head, if he were to ignore the sunlight still tucked away in the curve of Eren’s circlet, the Prince would look very much like any other college boy just then. A college boy with impeccable posture and a regal cut to his jaw, but a college boy nonetheless; all limbs and uneasy smiles, all tentative steps and quiet questions.
> 
> (But a prince is a prince is a prince. And yet.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when will they kiss though

Even with the middle of summer coming upon him, Levi can’t stop wondering just how the _fuck_ he keeps ending up in situations like this.

(“ _you should come to the guard barracks_ ,” Eren had said without preamble, as if there hadn’t been something on his mind since the rainstorm they’d been caught in. The sun had been setting, and the brown of his skin had glowed a shade of almost-gold among the circle of hibiscus bushes, tucked away in another part of the gardens. “ _you know_ , _when they’re beating me up_.”

“ _don’t you mean when you’re beating_ them _up_?”

Levi had been awarded a smile—pristine and unguarded—and had pretended that his heart didn’t do that stupid thing it does, where it feels like a set of tires skidding uselessly against mud. He pretended further that the white of Eren’s smile and the almost fucking _picturesque_ tousling of his hair by the breeze hadn’t been twisting his stomach into knots.

He had been under the impression that his brain and his mouth were on the same page. He’d rolled his refusal around in his mouth, had become acquainted with the taste, had expected it to fall from his tongue and rest beside the Prince’s feet, unashamed of itself. After all, there was always work to be done. Just because he could make time in the gardens didn’t mean he could make time elsewhere.

And yet when he spoke, what came out of his mouth had been, “ _i’ll think about it._ ”

At the time, he’d attempted to convince himself that he still meant _no_. But then Eren had smiled a little wider, as though whatever tension that had been living inside him was completely forgotten, and one of his cheeks had dimpled, and Levi had once more felt betrayed. Cosmically.)

The shadowed space beneath one of the palace awnings is cool enough this early in the day to give the illusion of a coming autumn, as if it isn’t more than a month away. The shade also provides him with some semblance of safety, tucked away as he is beside one of the awning’s columns, almost entirely hidden from view in the event that anyone was looking for a gardener inside the Prince’s Guard.

It’s an assassin’s position, beside this column—he can see everything from here, at the outermost edge of the training ground’s sawdust circle. The three stair-steps he has in height make up for that which he lacks physically, and even with the sun dancing along sword sheaths to create a glare, he’s in the perfect place for a headcount. It’s the ideal location for an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses for every present member of the palace and Prince’s Guard.

Levi supposes that a part of him ought to be grateful that that skillset had been so drilled into him that he’d gotten it done in four heartbeats worth of time, even as the habit makes his skin feel like it’s pulled too tightly over his bones. Otherwise, he might’ve been unable to watch Eren work, and then this whole risk-taking venture would’ve been for nothing. Or, perhaps it’s more likely that he would’ve been unable to attend to taking stock of his surroundings, with the Prince moving like he is.

It really _is_ something spectacular to behold.

Watching Eren Jaeger is a lot like watching a river on the cusp of running over; each movement is connected to the last, from the way his wrist rotates as he adjusts the blade in his hand to the way he dances backward when a strike comes from his opponent.  Even the sunlight seems like an extension of his body as it hugs the line of his shoulders and clings to the curve of his circlet while he continuously shifts his weight in the midst of combat.

Levi doesn’t know the name of the Guard that drew the short straw today—it’s an older man, sporting graying blonde hair and a day’s worth of stubble—but he can tell by the color of the leather armor that he’s one of the Prince’s and not the palace’s. Even if the regalia weren’t so distinct, it would be easy to tell. When the Guard lunges, he doesn’t hesitate. When he makes an attempt at disarming, there’s no shift in his grip on his blade to make it easier on Eren. The Prince’s Guard are used to going after the man they’re charged to protect without mercy, and it’s obvious that this is one of the ways that they show their pride in him.

The smile that the Guardsman wears chases away the wrinkles around his mouth when Eren twists away from a particularly nasty strike, and that only serves to drive the point home.

The palace guards present, on the other hand, are all shifting nervously, glancing at one another as if questioning the integrity of a Guard that would make it a daily mission to harm the Prince. When the tip of the sword gets too close to Eren’s face, each and every member of the palace guard flinches, while only one or two of the Prince’s Guard look away from the display—just in case he _does_ get impaled, Levi supposes.

The tension getting passed around the outside of the sawdust circle, whether it be by the brushing of shoulders or by whispered concerns, doesn’t seem to manage to make it out into the sunlight to cling to the combatants. It would show itself in the form of hesitation, in frown lines, in clumsy mistakes.

But the only thing that Levi can see upon Eren’s face is something that looks a lot like joy, and _fuck_ if it doesn’t look beautiful on him like everything else he wears. He’s _laughing_ as he hops backward, one of his cheeks dimpling, and the scrape of his blade against his opponent’s as he thrusts forward is barely enough to drown out the sound. His laughter still lives when the metallic ringing stops and he slides behind the Guardsman, their spines brushing close together even as their bodies shift to fall back into the rhythm of their spar.

And there’s a moment just then—the Prince, executing an almost-flawless pirouette to catch the Guardsman’s blade high enough to render his strike ineffective—that their eyes meet in what could be something cinematic. Levi can feel the green of Eren’s gaze like a weight, knows that the sensation of fingers rooting around in his chest is only half his imagination. He knows, too, that the little flutter of his fingers he gives Eren in a wave is entirely improper, just like he knows that he doesn’t really give a shit when Eren smiles at him like that, even in the midst of a low-stakes battle.

It’s reckless and foolish for Eren to linger on him like he is, but he does it anyway, holding his blade in a guard that could stop most strikes from delivering mortal wounds, and Levi lets himself trace Eren’s frame for as long as the moment lasts. It’s selfish, certainly. Stupid, without a doubt.

But there’s sawdust in Eren’s hair and dirt on his battle-ready formalwear, from the toes of his dress boots to the dull sparkle of the buttons on his jacket, and the picture he makes drops Levi’s heart into his stomach, threatening to cook it there as he remembers what Eren had looked like, fresh from the barracks and surrounded by flowers as he’d whispered, “ _it’s you_.” So yes, it’s definitely selfish, but in that split-second that he allows himself, he can’t quite bring himself to care.

The moment is broken when the Guardsmen’s sword comes for Eren’s throat in a horizontal slash, and it’s almost a relief when the hands inside his chest let go of his lungs and he can breathe again.

The Prince ducks into a roll to avoid the attempted beheading, switching his own blade from his right hand to his left as he rises back into an offensive stance. As he does, the sun turns his white-gold circlet into a halo of flame, and it brings to mind the image of a dragon, waiting for someone brave enough to come forward, lungs filled and ready to breathe fire.

The Guardsman comes forward, and Eren steps back, flinching approximately not at all as the blade barely skims against the skin of his cheek. The cut doesn’t begin to bleed until the two of them begin once more to circle each other, sweat beading at their temples as both of them attempt to even out their breathing.

The Queen Regent must trust each and every member of this Guard more than she trusts anyone else to allow them so close to the Prince. It’s something that Levi had realized before— _years_ before—but finds himself unable to pull his mind away from, as he watches the drop of blood draw a line down the side of Eren’s face, toward the cut of his jaw. If she didn’t, if she cared just a little less about her son’s welfare, it would be a prime hunting ground for people that wanted him dead.

(The floor had been cold beneath Levi’s forehead, but his body hadn’t trembled. If anything, he’d felt made of stone as he waited for the Queen Regent’s judgement, the Sunlit Hall almost silent, though he knew that she was still sitting on her throne, watching him as one might watch a fly struggling in a cup of water.

He could feel her eyes on the curve of his spine—and he hadn’t liked that feeling much.

“ _this information is invaluable,_ ” she’d said, her voice the carefully controlled timbre of a distant pipe organ, readying itself for someone’s funeral rites. Levi hadn’t felt himself comforted at all. “ _what would you like as your reward?_ ”

“ _i beg your pardon, your majesty_ ,” Levi had replied, his own voice steady, murmured against the speckled night-sky of the stone floor beneath him, “ _but i don’t know what you mean._ ”

“ _you’ve preserved the life of our only son, as well as our own and our beloved husband_.” She’d spoken slowly, but she hadn’t sounded amused. “ _that generally comes with a reward of some sort, though we think in recent years there have been less jewels and more favors afforded to those who earn them_.” She’d paused and it had been heavy, had settled on Levi’s back along with the press of her attention, and he hadn’t felt comfortable enough to speak. “ _how would you like a prestigious position as a member of the prince’s guard?_ ”

His heart had frozen inside his chest, because the only thing he could think about were bright green eyes in a dark corridor and the sleepy question of a ten-year-old boy, a Prince he hadn’t known would be so _young_. But, then, Levi had been young too.

And yet as young as he’d been, his brain had started running away in a flurry of possibilities. Surely he’d be recognized, if he were that close to the Prince. Surely the boy would hate him. Surely, with a position so close to the king-to-be he’d been sent to murder, it would be just a matter of time until he was asked to try again. Surely, if he were to take a position like that, the Prince would know that the world was out to get him—and the world didn’t really know he even _existed_ yet.

He still wonders if the Queen Regent had known that. Had wondered then if she’d just wanted an easy way to keep an eye on him. It’s not like he would’ve been able to blame her, if that was all that the occasion had been for.

It had taken a moment, for him to catch his breath—past the realization that he couldn’t go home, after the request he was about to make. Past the feeling that he hadn’t really had a home in a long time. Past a lot of feelings, sitting at the back of his throat.

“ _that honor is beyond me, your majesty_ ,” he’d said. “ _but i think there is something that i’d like to do._ ”

“ _speak_ ,” she’d told him, “ _and it’s yours_.”

“ _seems to me that your gardens ought to look better than backwoods weeds_.” This, he’d figured, was the way he could protect the royal family who hadn’t demanded the right to see him dead. And the only thing on his hands would be dirt and flower petals. “ _and i think i can fix that_.”)

Levi tries to put himself in the Guardsman’s position, wonders what it would be like to know Eren that way. Wonders what it would be like to know if he would turn on his heel here, if he would get in close for a strike with the hilt of his sword. He wonders further what it would be like to see Eren’s ferocity burning in his eyes, so _close_ , to see the set of his saw and the focused press of his lips.

And then he stops himself. After all, memories are clearer than dreams.

The ghost of laughter caresses the side of his face, and the bright flash of Eren’s smile is still behind his eyelids when he blinks minutes, and hours, and _days_ after seeing him. He thinks of Eren, softened by lamplight and garden shadows, thinks of him soaked through to the bone by rainwater and not shivering at all. In the back of his mind, he sees Eren’s Guardsman friend, the one who’d been in the gardens when Eren had backed up into the tunnel of orange honeysuckle.

Every single one of those memories are stolen. They’re brief and fleeting, but they’re _his_. Or, wait. That’s not—they’re _theirs_. There are only hints of the Eren that Levi knows in the one still dancing across the training yard, and that’s the Prince that Levi would be serving. Every movement a stiff one, every half-smile just a little sharp around the edges.

(There’s never a moment where Eren isn’t a Prince. He always holds himself with his shoulders back, his chin held up, his feet positioned just so. Even when he speaks, there’s evidence of his rank, despite the frank honesty with which he chooses his words.

But he’s nothing like Levi had expected him to be, when the perfumes of flowers smooth out the jut of his cheekbones, when the whisper of a summer breeze makes his lips seem just a little bit more loose.

Eren Jaeger is always a Prince, but it feels like there are moments where he’s Levi’s more than anyone else’s.

And of course, like so much else, that line of thinking is dangerous.)

The gardens fade from the edges of Levi’s vision, bleeding into the scenery of the training yard. Across the field of guards and dirt and sawdust, Eren slides beneath a slash that almost kisses his throat, his sword having been lost in an artless but effective disarm only a second or two before. A swear rises up from the Prince’s Guard present, others flinching enough to look like a recoil. A select few of the palace guards turn away completely, holding their hands before their eyes. It’s unfortunate that they do, because when Eren rises, it’s from a motion so fluid and so seamless that even his opponent looks baffled as to how, exactly, he gets his legs stolen out from under him.

With his knee, Eren sends the Guardsman’s sword to the dirt and out of reach, and before the man can gather himself enough for an attempt at hand-to-hand combat, there’s a knife in Eren’s hand and pressed to his throat. Levi thinks that he might’ve blinked, or maybe his attention had been too divided—he hadn’t seen where the knife had come from.

It’s from this position that the Guardsman taps the ground beneath his palm twice in surrender, and the audience present loses its _goddamn mind_.

Guards rush forward, onto the sawdust, and a cloud of dirt gathers around them. Congratulations are shouted back and forth, the Guardsman brought into a circle of friends for conciliatory slaps on the shoulder and the ruffling of hair. Too much is being said too loudly for Levi to make out much of the specifics, but there are few, if _any_ , people that aren’t celebrating _somehow_ , whether it’s by throwing their bodyweight against their friends or shaking one another like champagne bottles.

Yet even amidst the chaos of victory, Eren is by himself. The congratulations come to him, too, _of course_ , and they’re coupled with wide grins and deep bows, but no one dares to clap him on the shoulder the way they do with their _equal_. Each and every member of both guards are deferential, from their posture down to the aversion of their eyes.

There’s a bubble of rank around him, like there always is, and Levi wonders if he’ll ever stop noticing just how _lonely_ the Prince looks.

(“ _excuse me_ ,” Eren had said, the streetlamp haloing him in the semi-darkness of the gardens, the shape of the sunburst on his forehead seeming more apparent in the half-light, “ _do we know each other?_ ”

Maybe it had been just this side of petulant. Maybe it hadn’t been the most regal thing that Eren had ever said in his life. But it had been irrevocably honest, inescapably _human_ , and Levi wonders if that was the moment he’d been done for.)

The Guardsman that had eaten shit is the only one to clasp Eren’s forearm in praise, and the smile that touches Eren’s lips is honest. And maybe it’s the distance, or maybe his eyes are starting to go, but the sag of his shoulders screams of _relief_ when the Guardsman lets him go, allowing himself to be swept back into the swarm of grasping hands and friendly jabs about his skills.

“You’ve trained him too well, Shadis!” Someone says over the shifting of bodies and rattle of sheathed weapons. The Captain of the Prince’s Guard says nothing, not even pretending at moving away from where he’s positioned between two scarred training dummies, arrows protruding from their chests.

The guard’s comment—or maybe it was one of the Prince’s—starts a new set of jeers, discipline tossed aside as the mixed troop of people make their way toward the barracks, putting distance between themselves and the main palace structure.

Eren makes no move to follow them, and no one asks him to come along, but it’s still a surprise that he makes his way across the training yard and up the stone stairs, right for Levi’s watchman’s post. It _shouldn’t_ be a surprise, really. But maybe Levi’s a little stupid when it comes to shit like this, whatever that means.

“You came,” is the first thing Eren says, and his smile is crooked and wide and stunning enough to be unfair.   

“You said I should,” Levi replies, still tucked against the awning’s column. “But you don’t look like _you_ took a beating.” As he says that, he sees the dried blood flaking on Eren’s cheek, the shadows beneath the roof smearing it into a thicker scar. It takes a lot of self-control not to reach up and thumb it away. “Much.”

“ _You_ said you’d think about it, not that you would.” They shouldn’t be standing as close as they are so out in the open, where any of the guards in the barracks could make their way to a different station and see them. Levi shouldn’t be able to smell the dirt on him, shouldn’t be able to smell the sunlight and the spar he just went through, but he doesn’t make any move to back away.

“I discovered that I could pencil you in.” Levi arches his eyebrows, and the space beneath the shade is warmer now than it had been during the entire course of the scuffle in the sawdust. Whatever whisper of the still-distant autumn had been, it had left Levi behind. “You know, just to be nice.”

“Just to be nice,” Eren echoes him, and there’s something playing across his face, and Levi isn’t sure he has a name for it. It seems he doesn’t have names for a lot of the things that Eren feels. “What did you think?”

“ _I_ think the Queen would have a _stroke_ if she saw how close a fucking sword came to your face.”

Eren laughs, bringing a fist to his mouth to muffle it, the only concession he makes to the fact that they’re not in the gardens, and that they’re not _really_ alone.

“Yeah,” he says, softly. “She never comes to these things. I ought to leave the fighting to the professionals, she says. Or something like that.” Eren’s tongue breaks the seam of his lips to wet them, and Levi does his best to pay as little attention to it as possible. The unnamable expression sitting on Eren’s face right now makes it easier than he’d thought it would be. “Do you think you could pencil in something else today?”

It gets warmer still beneath the shade of the yard’s awning. Levi can feel sweat beading on the back of his neck, can feel it start the slow crawl down his spine.

“I’ve got shit to do,” is what Levi tells him. It smacks of his attempt at _no_ when Eren had asked for his presence here. “Flowers to clip, compost to move.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Eren’s voice bounces, the sing-song insistence of an excitable kid. “It’s something no one’s ever seen before, and you’ll be able to get back to work without anyone even noticing you weren’t there. There’ll still be flowers to clip and compost to move and I won’t even hover around to bother you.”

The offer makes Levi blink, makes his whole body start as if he’d been smacked just a little too hard. “You never bother me.”

When Eren shifts, the shadows shift around him, giving fleeting glimpses of something hanging around his shoulders. It’s impossible to look at head-on, because every time Levi makes an attempt to hold it in the center of his vision it dips away, even as it does it’s best to haunt the hollows of Eren’s cheeks.

“It won’t take that long,” Eren continues, as if Levi hadn’t said anything at all. “And you’ll like it, I promise.”

If Levi were to squint and tilt his head, if he were to ignore the sunlight still tucked away in the curve of Eren’s circlet, the Prince would look very much like any other college boy just then. A college boy with impeccable posture and a regal cut to his jaw, but a college boy nonetheless; all limbs and uneasy smiles, all tentative steps and quiet questions.

(But a prince is a prince is a prince.

And yet.)

“Something no one’s ever seen before?” Levi asks, because _no_ would have been impossible to say just then, just like it had been impossible to say before.

“Yeah,” Eren breathes out, and the smile that rises to his face is wide enough to reveal his teeth. “I think you’ll like it.”

Levi licks his lips and tastes sawdust, as if he’d been the one doing all the footwork in the sun. The tightness in his chest only adds to the effect. “Then what do you want to show me? I think I can find the time.”

It’s like a sunrise, personified. Eren’s eyes won’t stop glowing and his cheek dimples _all over again_ , and his teeth are bright and white and astounding against the brown of his skin. Even the sunburst on his forehead seems to burn a little brighter, as if truly emulating the star it’s designed after.

“Meet me by the kitchens in ten minutes.” There’s delight in the way the Prince says it, in the way his eyes glitter.

“Okay,” Levi says, watching as Eren takes a step backward out of the minimal cover that the column had provided. “But it better impress the fuck out of me. I better be seeing the face of a _god_.”

Eren laughs, and this time he doesn’t muffle it, already making his way to the main body of the palace.

“It’s something like that,” Eren says over his shoulder, and the summer breeze plays with his hair as he walks, and Levi wants to throw something. His heart won’t stop racing, even as it skids against mud, unable to go _anywhere_.

Levi doesn’t move from the safety of the shade until he knows Eren is gone, until he knows that anyone that had even the _potential_ of hearing them had gotten as far away as possible. In that almost-silence and relative peace, he takes a moment to breathe in the way summertime tastes outside the gardens, to glance around one of the places that the Prince spends so much time. He thinks again of the life he could’ve had _here_ , without the noise of battle echoing around him. He thinks of himself dressed in the royal family’s colors but in the Prince’s leathers.

And then he makes his way to the kitchens in a way he would never be able to as a Guardsman. He savors every step he takes and the way it feels to take them.

He savors the way Eren had looked at him, among all the guards present, amid the ferocity of a _swordfight_ , and he knows—absolutely, without a doubt—that this is the life that he wouldn’t really trade for anything.

 And that thought makes it a little bit hard to breathe.

(“ _i’m ready to have the pants shocked off of me,_ ” Levi will say later, when it’s the two of them in the shadows of the kitchens’ corridor. Eren’s still covered in dirt and sawdust, and Levi is close enough to smell the sunlight on him, close enough to see that he still hasn’t wiped the blood from the cut on his face. “ _impress me_.”

“ _oh_ ,” Eren will reply, and even in light much less bright than that outside the palace, his teeth flash white, “ _i think you’ll be pretty well impressed_.”

Eren’s fingers will make their way over the stones of the wall beside them as they make their way down the hallway, and when he finds what he’s looking for, he will stop. It will take a moment for Levi’s mind to catch up with what is happening, and by then Eren will have used all his weight to push one of the stones into the wall, and something heavy will sound behind it.

Eren’s circlet will catch the light from the wall sconces around them, the bulbs in them set at their brightest for the coming midday, and Levi will be able to see sweat still glistening at his hairline. It will be what catches and holds his attention, until the Prince pulls the wall aside to reveal another corridor behind it, the darkness there broken only by weakly flickering electric lamps, stuck fast to walls that look older than any part of the palace Levi had ever been in.

“ _i’ve never told anyone about this before,_ ” Eren will say, and Levi will feel his openness like a physical thing around him, pressing the air out of his lungs. And Eren’s smile will be small, and maybe it will be nervous, and he will look much as he does when he’s out of his Prince’s clothes. The vulnerability will be the same, the way his gaze flickers back and forth over Levi’s face, the way his weight shifts between his feet as he waits for Levi’s response.

But Levi won’t be able to say anything just then.

And so he will wait for the words to come to him, like he always does.)

-

(It had felt like a weight sitting on his ribcage, slowly pressing the breath out of his lungs.

“ _and apparently, the crown prince has started tuning me out because the plant-quiz he wanted to start is really fucking boring, like i told him it would be._ ” The gardens had been warm even in the shade of the gazebo, though the air was less humid after the rain, and the smell of plant-life had been thick around them. Levi’s voice couldn’t’ve been _that_ loud, but the interior of the gazebo had made it louder, had made Eren almost jump from where he’d been leaning against the heavy stone railing.

For a moment, he’d been dizzy with a sense of déjà vu.

“ _what_?” Eren had said, his attention pulled away from what Levi had called _snow eriogonum_ , the shrubs’ pink-white petals dusting the grass beneath them. “ _what were you saying?_ ”

Levi had stood from where he was crouched beside one of the shrubs, broken twigs protruding from between his fingertips. His eyebrows had arched toward his hairline, though his mouth had been curling with something that looked a lot like amusement. “ _something on your mind, your highness?_ ”

A lot had been on his mind, just then. The way Levi had looked, knees peppered with petals and the sun catching on the stormclouds of his eyes. How warm it had been, and the sensation of sweat sliding between his shoulder blades. The feeling of something rising so hard and fast in his throat that he’d thought he was going to vomit.

“ _no_ ,” Eren had told him past the nausea churning in his stomach, impressions of a dream he couldn’t even fucking remember sitting heavy on his shoulders. Despite that weight, he stands quick enough to make his head spin. “ _but i have to go._ ”

“ _what?_ ” Levi had blinked and the soft curve of his mouth had dropped away for something harder. “ _are you okay?_ ”

Eren had already started down the stairs and his legs had felt stiff, creaking every time he moved. “ _yes. yeah. i’ll see you later, levi_.”

“ _yeah_ ,” Levi had said to his back, his voice almost swallowed by the gardens. “ _see you_.”)

This is what people outside the palace would call a trust fall.

It has to be, for all the rolling his stomach is doing, for all the racing of his heart, for all the sweating of his palms. There’s no other way to describe whatever the _fuck_ is going on inside his body, and it’s enough to make his hands shake when he extends his fingers.

And so he keeps them curled together when Levi looks at him like that.

It’s a parallel almost, this entire situation, to when they’d met in the gardens the second time, when the darkness of nighttime had pushed away the heat of the day that came before it. Just like then, Eren is sitting and waiting, watching Levi watch him, neither one of them looking away from the other. And now, just like then, there’s enough tension in Levi’s body to shatter a diamond, his jaw working around something that he can’t seem to spit out.

And now, _exactly_ like then, there’s the question of drawing lines. There ought to be one, here. The fact of the matter is, Eren _knows_ that there’s one here, because there’s _always_ a line—a curtain, a wall, a chasm—between him and everyone else. So he supposes he can understand the trepidation that Levi has to be feeling right now.

It stands to reason, after all. Sitting together in the gardens is entirely different from sitting together in a prince’s bedchambers.

“There are secret passages in your palace,” Levi says, standing on the other side of a polished coffee table, though there’s a pillowed wicker chair behind him, almost pressed against his calves. It’s the first thing he’s said since Eren had opened a passage in the corridor by the kitchens, sliding a section of the stone wall to the side to reveal a hallway bathed in almost unbroken darkness and semi-ancient dust.

(“ _tough read?_ ” Levi had said, stepping from behind a curve of what he’d later called creeping phlox, and his tone had been exactly the same.)

“There are secret passages in the palace,” Eren replies from his place on the other side of the coffee table. His seated position makes this easier, makes his knees less likely to shake, makes him seem a lot calmer than he feels, even though his knuckles are going white.

(It’s Eren whose tone has changed. There had been the opportunity for distance, then—when he’d said “ _excuse me_ ,” soft enough to disguise the hurt that had been scalding the back of his throat, “ _do we know each other?_ ”

But what he’s started is a freefall, and Eren can’t be sure if he’d made a mistake or not.)

“You said no one knew about this,” Levi tells him, and it’s a question without being a question, an exercise in talking around in circles. The similarity between then and now is enough to make Eren taste the gardens, a heaviness on his tongue, and it centers him, a little.

“That’s what I said.” His words are being pushed through the windpipe that his throat has become, and it’s an uphill battle to make them come out clear enough not to be mistaken for a wheeze. “I mean, I’m sure at some point someone knew about them. There’s electrical wiring in the lamps, and there are vents in the ceiling, but all of it’s old.” There are a lot of stories Eren could tell about them. The fact that he’d found the first passage in the family crypt, a place that had become a refuge when his mortality had gotten just a little too heavy for him to sit with by himself. The fact that he’d learned them forward and backward, and could wander them blind, if he’d had to.

The fact that his mother had wanted him to keep them a secret, even from her.

“ _Why?_ ” Levi’s entire posture shifts as he pushes a hand through his hair. Loose soil falls from his free hand to the floor, and for the first time since they’ve met one another, Eren realizes how out of place Levi must think he looks just then. It’s a similar outfit to what he always wears—a T-shirt, jeans, and his workboots. And among the tapestries that Eren hadn’t gotten to choose and the thick rugs on the stone floor that he did, Levi does look very... different from the things that Eren had grown up around.

(But there’s a stupid, fragile part of him that likes to think that Levi looks like he could belong here, coated in the sunlight stretching across the floor from the glass doors of his balcony, among the bookcases lining the walls.

He thinks of the way Levi had waved at him in the training yard, a split-second of contact that had made him almost dangerously weak at the knees.

And he feels himself about to hit the ground, wonders if a fall from this height could kill him. Wonders a lot of things.)

“Why what?” Eren says, blinking past the image of creeping phlox and cosmos, pulling himself away from memories, even as the echoes of figments of a dream he can’t remember still cling to his clothes.

“ _Why_ did you show them to me?” A bird flutters by the glass doors behind him, its shadow making its way from one end of the wall to the other. For a moment, it flickers across Levi’s face. “Do you know how _dangerous_ it is to tell someone about something like that? They could get _anywhere_.” Levi turns, the sunlight shifting with him to press against the hollows of his cheeks and sharpen the line of his cheekbones, and he gestures toward one of the bookcases, still slightly ajar with a passageway behind it. “They could get to _you_.”

“I’m aware,” Eren tells him, and his voice freezes the inside of his mouth as he breathes it out, trying to keep it level. “That’s why I said no one else knew about them. That’s why I showed them to _you_.”

Levi shakes his head slightly, and it makes the hair he’d messed up settle back into place. “I still don’t fucking understand you, sometimes.”

It’s something he has a habit of saying, when Eren does something Levi doesn’t expect. There are nights where Eren will steal them each a pastry, or there are those where he’ll bring an extra thermos with him, despite the heat of the day that the nighttime can’t completely rid itself of. There are days where Eren will tuck himself in one of the endless alcoves in the gardens, gesturing for silence when Levi inevitably finds him, the voices of guards floating over their heads from the direction of the palace.

(“ _i don’t get you_ ,” Levi will tell him.

“ _that’s me_ ,” Eren will reply. “ _an enigma._ ”

But it gets a little bit tiring, he thinks. Being an enigma.)

“It’s exhausting,” Eren says softly, instead of falling into the dance that he knows the steps to. His words trickle across the floor, spreading out like fog, and his bedchambers sigh around them. There are a lot of things only his bedroom knows after all, and even now it feels weird to say them aloud to a _person_. “Not trusting anybody with things.”

Levi blinks at him, and it’s in increments that Eren watches some of the tension leave his shoulders despite the weight of what he’d said. It’s a lot to say in so little. And Eren _knows_ , objectively, that it’s a lot. All Eren has been doing since they met—since that fucking sunflower field, tens of feet below them, where Levi had been cast golden by the sunset—is dropping burdens onto someone who hadn’t asked for any of them.

The silence settles around them, pressing down on Eren’s collarbone almost painfully. It’s almost like the summer had rolled in from outside and decided to hang from the air between them—heavy and still and endless.

The silence is broken when Levi says, “so,” and he holds Eren’s attention as if with both hands. “You decided to trust me with special access to your tacky ornate furniture?”

(Eren’s heart slams against his sternum and he doesn’t hit the ground. The freefall eases to a stop and there’s solid ground beneath him, holding him upright.)

“No,” Eren says, and when his fingers unlace themselves from one another, his hands are shaking. It feels a lot like the moment Levi had decided to sit beside him on the stone bench, though there’s a coffee table between them now, and no breeze to play with the scents of flowers around them both. “I decided to trust you with a special _route_ to observe my tacky ornate furniture.”

Levi laughs, and Eren can almost see the rest of his nerves rise on bubbles, where they pop against the vaulted ceiling. His body loosens further as he lifts a fist to muffle himself, and the corners of his eyes wrinkle with it. It goes on a little too long to be spurred by Eren’s stupid joke, but it’s better than nothing, and Eren takes what he can get just then.

“You’re something else, kid,” Levi rubs at his mouth, his index finger tracing over the smile that lingers on his lips. “And your furniture doesn’t suit you.”

“ _Okay_ , but my furniture wasn’t actually why I brought you here.” The wicker chair creaks when Eren stands, and Levi’s eyes follow him, one of his eyebrows arching in a perfect curve. His weight shifts between his feet as if he’s preparing for another trek through the unseen corridors of the palace.

“No?” Levi says, his other eyebrow joining the first. “There’s more than the secret passages and the tacky furniture?”

“No,” Eren replies, stepping around his chair and fighting the urge to spare a glance over his shoulder, the sensation of someone at his back making his skin crawl. But this is a part of... everything. This is a part of the exercise. “And yes.”

For all that Levi’s workboots are heavy, his footsteps are silent until Eren opens the glass doors to his balcony, bringing in sunlight and the heavy smell of summer, pushed forward by a breeze that feels like a whisper against his cheeks. The stone is solid beneath his feet as he crosses the threshold, even as his heart crawls its way up his throat.

And there’s a sea of sunflowers, stretching outward toward the horizon. It looks almost endless, from here.  

“Holy shit,” Levi says from behind him, a heartbeat before he becomes a shape in Eren’s periphery, leaning over the stone railing and staring out over the sunflowers as the tip their heads together to whisper to one another, basking in the sun as it crawls its way across the sky. “Holy _shit_. I’ve never seen them from this high up. Fuck, they go on _forever_ don’t they?”

The sunlight makes the roots of Levi’s hair look spun from gold, and Eren can’t help the way he finds himself tracing his profile, the way that his mouth curves upward gently as if it’s afraid of its own enthusiasm. The picture Levi makes leaves a stone in Eren’s throat, clogs his windpipe and makes his knees feel  a little bit too fragile to hold his weight, despite the solid positioning of his feet on the balcony.

“I don’t bail on banquets for _nothing_ ,” Eren tells him, and he almost doesn’t sound like himself when he speaks. “There was a reason you caught me snooping in your sunflower field and not eating whatever it was that was merting whatever occasion.”

“I can see why,” Levi replies, and it’s really unfair just then, the way his eyes look against the blue of the sky at his side. “They _do_ look pretty incredible.” He shifts his weight, adjusting his body to make it easier to rest his forearms on the railing, tracing the carved stone absently with one fingertip. “You used your little gopher tunnels to get outside, didn’t you?”

Eren snorts and it presses against the stone at the back of his tongue, driving it backward. “I mean, I wouldn’t call myself a fucking _gopher_ , but I guess that’s how it worked, yeah.”

When Levi speaks, it’s almost soft enough to be carried away by the breeze, even as gentle as it is.

“Unbelievable,” he says. “I knew you looked a little too filthy to have made your way through the palace like a normal person.”

(Eren hadn’t expected to find _anyone_ in the field with him, much less the man who had worked the earth himself. He’d expected to be alone, to have a moment of peace where he could smell what summer might be like if he could take a step without pressing himself against a glass enclosure.

And yet Levi had been there, caught by surprise and ready to burst into motion. The sunflowers had bowed, a little, and it had looked deferential when Eren had moved them aside, their heavy heads nodding toward what was basically their sovereign.

He remembers, very distinctly, the prickling of his skin underneath Levi’s sudden attention.)

“Some of the hallways have more dust than others, so I worked with what I could,” Eren tells him. “Dirt loves me.”

A muscle in Levi’s jaw twitches, and when his eyes fall on Eren’s face, he can feel his gaze like a weight. The unreal touch trails down his cheek and goosebumps rise on his skin. But the ghost of a stare is nothing compared to the sensation of Levi’s fingertips against the side of his face.

Or what his fingers might’ve felt like, if Levi had actually completed the motion that he’d started.

“Dirt does seem to love you,” Levi tells him quietly, his hand held between them, only half a hair away from Eren’s cheek, “since you still have blood on your face.”

Levi has to be able to feel the heat rising to his cheeks, with as close as he is to Eren’s face. He has to be able to see how difficult it is for Eren to breathe just then, has to be able to notice the vibrations that have started inside his bones and are working outward. He _has_ to notice.

Eren swallows, and it hurts, and he lifts his own hand to rub at his cheek until he can no longer feel anything beneath the heel of his palm.

“Did I get it?” Eren asks, and his voice won’t rise above a whisper, despite his efforts.

It’s with a blink that Levi starts, as if he’d been shocked by the fact that Eren could _talk_ , and he huffs out a breath that brushes against Eren’s face.

“Yeah,” Levi clears his throat, dropping his hand and turning back toward the horizon. “You got it.”

The silence that settles feels like a blanket, thick and made of wool, and Eren feels _smothered_ for a moment, before Levi speaks again.

“Thank you,” is what he says. The sunflowers below them bow and rise again with the breeze, a wave of smooth motion. A car passes by the palace, all alone on the road, and it kicks up dust in a small cloud behind it.

“For what?” Eren replies, still catching his breath from how close Levi had been to committing a _crime_ with his fingertips, and how much Eren had wanted him to. He leans his weight against the stone railing as his hands threaten to shake, wondering absently what it would be like to be able to drag his fingers through the sea of flowers to get rid of his nervous energy. Levi shifts beside him, though his gaze doesn’t drop away from where he watches the sunflowers sway back and forth.

“For showing me the passage.” He pauses and the wind whispers around them, the sun sitting almost at its apex by now. And then Levi says, “for trusting me.”

(“ _no one can ever know all of you_ ,” his mother had said once, tugging gently at his hair. He’d been much smaller then, and her hands hand been soft where she’d touched his face. “ _it’s dangerous for anyone to know you too well._ ”

“ _that’s no fun_ ,” Eren had replied, can still feel the pout he’d put on even now. “ _how do you make any friends or love anyone without trusting them?_ ”

His mother had smiled and he hadn’t understood.

He doesn’t suppose that he understands her now, either.)

“You always show me shit in the gardens,” Eren says softly. “And you always tell me things when I ask. I guess I wanted to share a little bit of my world with you, too.” He watches his words fall to the dirt beneath his balcony, and thinks of how it had felt to fight with Levi watching, knowing that in that moment their worlds had blended, even if it hadn’t been for very long.

“This is a little bit easier to understand than _just astrophysics_ ,” Levi cuts him a glance that is all narrowed eyes and mischief, and it makes his ribs feel too close to his lungs. “But you’re begging your mom to kick your ass.”

Eren laughs, and lets himself laugh loudly. The door to his bedchambers is far behind them, and he likes the way it feels to have it rise from his mouth and reach its fingers toward the sunflowers. “Those of royal blood don’t _beg_ for anything,” Eren tells him, wiping at a line of sweat beginning beside his ear. “But I might really be _requesting_ that she kick my ass, yeah.”

Levi snorts to himself and the summer’s sigh tugs at his hair. He’s too beautiful to be real, just like this moment is too good to be true. But there’s no dream clinging to his bones anymore, no words pressing against the backs of his teeth, demanding their freedom. It’s just them, and the sunflowers, and the almost-noon sun.

(If this were a movie, Eren thinks that this would be the moment they would kiss.)

“I’m glad you came,” Eren tells the horizon instead. “For everything.”

“I’m glad I came,” Levi replies, and he speaks like the sigh of the waving sunflowers. “For everything.” There’s a pause, then, and he says, “you’re pretty good at the combat thing. For fighting with a geriatric.”

Eren laughs a second time and now the breeze takes it, carrying it toward the capital, a glittering shape on the distant skyline. And when Eren glances over, he finds Levi smiling.

(Levi will stand with him for a few moments more, and the familiarity that will settle around them feels a lot like the gardens just then. The distance between them will be just as standard, the direction of their conversation just as normal.

 _i wish you’d touched me_ , Eren will want to say into the quiet, _instead of telling me about the blood on my face._

But before he can crush the sentiment beneath something else, _anything_ else, Levi will say, “ _do you want to meet in the gardens tonight?_ ”

Eren will blink and his eyes will feel dry. “ _i promised i wouldn’t bother you after this_.”

“ _and i said you never bother me_.”

He won’t know what to call the feeling scraping the inside of his throat raw, but the feeling of freefalling will come back to mind, the sensation of losing his footing almost making his knees weak.

“ _okay_ ,” Eren will say anyway. “ _i’ll see you in the gardens, like always_.”

And Levi will echo him, soft enough to almost get lost in a particularly intense gust of wind, “ _like always_.”)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Holy _shit_ ,” Eren breathes, turning a slow circle in the center of the university’s campus. It’s just them on the grass, the mist from a polished copper fountain casting a rainbow beside them, dusting Levi’s hair in water droplets. “Holy shit, there’s brickwork _everywhere_.”
> 
> “Yeah,” Levi replies, admiring the way the hat frames the mess of Eren’s hair. It’s windswept and beautiful, tousled by the wind’s vicious fingers from the drive over, if only because he’d had himself halfway out the window of the truck, bracing his weight on one hand while he’d held the hat against his head with the other. 
> 
> He’d been laughing the entire time, and Levi can still see remnants on his face—his mouth is still curved upward and his skin is glowing with its afterburn. It makes it difficult to think of anything else to say that doesn’t sound like a fucking love confession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "when will they kiss!" you want to know. "i want them to kiss!"
> 
> me too buddies

Bugs are droning, somewhere.

 _Somewhere_ is Eren’s best guess, tucked against the palace wall like he is. The stone at his back muffles everything, and it’s impossible to tell if the chirping is coming from _his_ side of the wall, or from over it. The sound is distracting, a little—and he doesn’t need a _noise_ grabbing for his attention when there are other things he ought to be paying mind to. There’s a member of the palace guard, for example, strolling along one of the battlements above him, the only thing preventing Eren from crossing the clear stretch of grass across the courtyard to where Levi is trimming a set of hedges that Eren doesn’t yet know the names for.

Maybe he’ll ask, when he’s a little less pressed for time.

“Going somewhere, Your Highness?”

For a moment, it feels a lot like a stone has just been dropped into his stomach.

It isn’t often that he can be caught by surprise. It comes from years of too-much awareness of the things going on around him, from walking behind people whenever possible, from keeping to himself inside the palace walls. But something has made him more complacent, recently. Or maybe it’s more like something has caught his attention and held it at the expense of hypervigilance.

Whatever the case happens to be, his skin almost peels away from his body, even has he turns his head slowly to regard Hannes with the most unamused expression he can muster.

Hannes looks unbothered, a smile pulling at the exhausted curve of his mouth. He doesn’t bow, either—just stands in the shadow of the stone wall, hands folded behind his back as professionally as possible. There’s nothing in his posture to indicate he _ought_ to be bowing, or smiling a little less. Eren supposes that’s what being a nanny will do to a person. There’s no reason one ought to defer to someone whose diapers they had to change.

A _little_ pretense would be nice, though.

“Can I help you?” Eren asks, keeping his voice a low sound at the back of his throat, though it’s not quite soft enough to be eaten by the endless droning of the summer bugs.

“I was just wondering if you were going somewhere.” Hannes’ eyes move up and down Eren’s body in a quick motion, one eyebrow arching high enough to deepen the wrinkles in his forehead. “You’re looking appallingly normal-dressed to be wandering around inside the palace like that. How long have you had those sneakers?”

Eren snorts, tucking his limbs close to his body. A breeze rattles its way through the crape myrtle that he’s hidden himself behind, purple flower petals fluttering their way to the pine-straw tucked around its roots.

“I’ve had these sneakers since the last time I went on an online shopping binge,” Eren tells him, the shadows shifting around them both as Hannes moves to rest his back against the wall beside him, his hands still held at the base of his spine. Another breeze whispers through the tree branches and the bugs hum their chorus a little later, and then he says, “I’m not going to be wandering around in the palace today, so I’m really not that underdressed.”

“Oh?” It’s dropped casually onto the dirt beneath their feet, sitting between Hannes’ boots and Eren’s sneakers. “Did you gather a retinue for your adventure? Last I saw, you had a couple Guards still parked by your bedroom door, if you wanted to ask them.”

“It’s a personal journey,” Eren says. “No excess baggage allowed.” As he speaks, he watches Levi work across the courtyard. The late morning is wrapped around him like a blanket, hanging from his shoulders in threads. It’s stupid to feel this way. Stupid to let his heart run wild like it is, stupid to even be out here in these _too normal_ clothes in the middle of the summer. Stupid to think that, even when he’s just wiping sweat from his forehead, Levi is almost too beautiful for words.

It’s lucky, Eren thinks, that when he speaks again his voice doesn’t crack.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he tells the tree branches, dropping his eyes to track the shadow of the palace guard, still making his slow walk along the battlement. “It’s not like I’m running away from home.”

It’s not surprising that Hannes takes shit like this in stride. It’s another thing that’s always been a part of him.

“I didn’t think you were,” Hannes tells him, sighing long and low, even as a smile frees itself from the laugh-lines around his mouth. The silence that stretches out between them is almost long enough that Eren wonders if the conversation is over, wonders if it’s unlikely he’ll ever _actually_ make it across the grass. But then, “you’ve been looking better, lately. If it’s an elaborate hoax, well, then maybe you’re _entitled_ to a prisonbreak, Your Highness.”

It comes as a surprise, a little. “Looking better?”

“Looking better,” Hannes repeats. For a moment, a few of the bugs get louder, singing at the top of whatever qualifies for lungs in insects, and Hannes waits for it to settle back into a background drone before he continues. “You haven’t been as angry. Her Majesty’s remarked on the fact that you’ve been butting heads with her less.” His smile widens, deepening the wrinkles on his face and showing his age—but it shows how often his skin is used to smiling. “And you’ve been throwing yourself into swordsmanship, I’ve noticed.

Pride feels a little bit like embarrassment just then, the way it pushes its way up the back of his neck in a warm rush, settling behind his ears. “Maybe you’ve just been getting lazy. Or you need to get your hips checked.”

Hannes’ hands come from behind him to cover his face, his shoulders trembling with... laughter. It hiccups against his palms, wheezes between his fingers, and Eren rolls his lips against laughter of his own. It’d give him away for _sure_ —and then he really would never get to even ask for this fucking ridiculous favor, and digging through his things for a single pair of denim shorts would’ve been for nothing.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re _not_ as good-humored as I thought,” Hannes says, clearing his throat and shifting against the wall to cross his arms over his chest. “I’d probably better go check and make sure you _haven’t_ run away.”

“What?” And then it’s almost like there’s a fist around his windpipe, curling too tightly around his throat. The laughter that had been resting against the back of his tongue dies without so much as a whisper, and betrayal is leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “I just _said_ —“

“I _haven’t_ seen you all morning,” Hannes continues, as if Eren hadn’t interrupted at all. And still it’s baffling, sometimes, the way Hannes speaks to him. It’s a little bit like speaking to Levi—but not exactly like that either. That, after all, is something else all its own. But this is still jarring in the way that it’s unlike anyone else’s speech. “And I ought to check your room. If you’re unwell, I can bring you something from the kitchens.”

The tension falls from Eren’s body all at once, hitting the ground with a quiet _thud_. The next thing out of his mouth is so weight with relief that it’s a wonder the words don’t sink. “I think I’d like that,” he says. “It’d also be nice if I could stay in bed today. Undisturbed. If you found me sick.”

“Obviously,” Hannes replies. “No one can get proper bedrest with the entire palace going in and out of their room all day.”

(Nostalgia tugs at him gently, tightening his throat.

Most of Eren’s earliest memories featuring Hannes in a role like this one. Where his mother had set rules to ensure his safety as the Prince and her heir, Hannes had allowed him to break those rules for the same reason. It’s always been that way, between the two of them—a give and take that had shaped Eren into whoever the fuck he was supposed to be now.

It makes him wonder, for a moment, what he would’ve been like had the King Consort taken a more active role in his childhood.

But he supposes that the two of them would have to speak more for that sort of speculation to matter.)

The summer heat touches Eren’s face with gentle fingers, and he realizes that Hannes had continued speaking while he’d taken a nosedive into what-had-been. The space where there had been conversation is now heavy with a statement that Eren hadn’t even _heard_.

“Um,” Eren says, and Hannes snorts out a laugh that gets swept away by the singing of bugs. “Repeat what you said.”

“I said that maybe you should cross over. The battlement doesn’t have anyone on it just now, and I have a Prince to check on.”

The shadow of the guard on top of the shadow of the battlement has indeed made its way further down the wall, out of Eren’s sight. By the way Hannes is smiling, it looks like he’d been waiting for the same thing, leaning against the palace wall in the barely-there cover of the crape myrtle tree.

“I’m sure the Prince is fine,” Eren tells him as he stands up straight, his nerves starting a small riot in his stomach.

“Me too,” Hannes moves away from the wall, staring out across the courtyard with his arms hanging loosely by his sides. “Have fun today. But be safe.”

“Of course,” Eren speaks over his shoulder as he steps out into the sunlight, the droning of the insects getting a little bit louder out of the shade. “I’m always safe.”

Hannes coughs out something that sounds like it would’ve been a laugh if they hadn’t been parting ways just then. But it, too, gets pressed beneath the breeze and the bugs and Eren’s own footsteps on the grass, and Hannes is gone by the time Eren makes it to the hedges, not even a shadow in his periphery.

(He knows, objectively, that he shouldn’t be out here. He knows that the conversation he’d had with Hannes and every step he’s taking are all mistakes, just like he knows he’s going to ask this favor anyway. This is probably another area of weakness—self-awareness with none of the effort to change anything.

Or—maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just that he’s never had anything like... whatever-this-is before. Maybe it’s that he wants to hold this as close as he can for as long as possible.)

Levi doesn’t lift his head, even as Eren gets close enough to cast a shadow on his workboots. He smells of sweat and twigs and sunscreen. He smells like _summer_ and flowers, and Eren’s stomach drops out of his body before he can even speak. But at least losing the butterflies keeps the nervous tremor out of his voice.

“You’re hard to find when you’re not in the gardens.”

“Well, contrary to popular belief,” Levi says, setting the hedge clippers back atop the woven basket and wiping sweat from his forehead with his wrist a second time, “I don’t actually live— _fucking_ shit, Your Highness.” He stops mid-pivot, the lower-half of his body still turned toward the basket filled with the hedges’ trimmings. His cheeks are going dark with the summer’s heat, the color curling around his ears. “Does your _mother_ know you’re walking around half-naked?”

Color rises beneath his own skin to match, though Eren’s has nothing to do with the heat. “Why does everyone talk like I’m not wearing clothes? I’m wearing clothes!”

“There are probably like ten people on this earth who have seen your ankles, much less your _knees_ , and one of them is the Queen Regent.” Despite the affronted glance Levi spares his outfit, there’s a smile pulling at his lips and he turns his body to face Eren properly. The atmosphere falls into place, like it always does, and Eren can almost smell the creeping phlox, can almost taste the weight of cosmos blossoms pressing down onto his tongue.

And, for a moment, Eren feels like a planet caught in orbit around a star.

“So what, exactly,” Levi continues, and this up-and-down perusal of his eyes is slower than the first and far more purposeful, “are you dressed down for?”

It makes Eren’s throat feel tight, makes his skin prickle where Levi’s gaze had touched it. “I’m hoping to go into the capital today.”

Levi snorts, pushing his hair away from his forehead with one hand, the strands falling over his fingers in a way that’s too artful to be realistic. It’s _unfair_. “And Her Majesty is okay with that? You, representing the Crown in a T-shirt and shorts?” Levi’s eyebrows arch and his index finger rises to press against his own forehead. “And with your tattoo covered up?”

A bird flutters beneath his ribcage, begging for its freedom, and shame begins creeping up toward his shoulders. But that doesn’t mean he lets them curl upward toward his ears, nor does he let his eyes fall from Levi’s face.

“No, not exactly,” Eren replies. “I didn’t ask her. I was hoping to get in and out without her finding out.”

“So, what, you’re getting one of your Guard to go with you? They’re a little bit too honest for that.” Only one corner of Levi’s mouth lifts just then, though what he says doesn’t sound much like a joke. “Aren’t they supposed to babysit you?”

“I wasn’t planning on taking a _Guard_ with me.” The air around them gets thick, if only because a wisp of cloud frees itself from the sun’s pull. The insects’ chirping increases in volume, as if in celebration of something that a human couldn’t understand. “I’m here to see if _you_ would take me to the capital. I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

The breeze plays with Levi’s hair while he refuses to breathe, his eyelids fluttering in quick, disbelieving blinks.

Eren is relatively sure his own regret is palpable and instantaneous.

“What?” Levi asks as Eren’s tongue goes numb, becoming deadweight in his mouth. “What?”

“My professor couldn’t come today,” Eren explains, and the bird inside his chest is beating its wings for an escape that isn’t coming. “I have an assignment due, and they emailed me, and they said that I could give it to them at the beginning of next week, but there’s the whole weekend between then and now, and I—“ he can feel his heart’s feathers tickling the back of his throat, can feel _ridiculous_ nervous tremors that want to start in his hands—but he crushes them. “I just want to turn in my assignment, on time, _in person_. For once. I want to see the school I’m supposed to be _attending_.”

The summer sighs its way through the hedges, scraping the leaves together while Levi watches him.

His lips thin, and the sigh he lets go of makes him lose almost two inches worth of height. “Your mother would _literally_ fucking kill me if I willingly took you into the city, kid.”

Eren’s palms are sweating as he presses forward, even though he _knows_ what that phrase means. He knows that it’s a refusal, but—

(It’s a skill of royalty, to bask in one’s own selfishness like Eren does. It has to be.)

He can’t stop talking, his voice falling from his mouth in droplets, thick and heavy. “Did you know the university’s not allowed to say I’m an attendee until _after_ I graduate? I can’t—they won’t even announce me as graduating with my class. I just—I want to walk around on campus and turn in _one fucking paper_ like a human being, and I can’t do that if I tell my mother, or the Guard, or... anybody else.”

Levi’s face softens in increments, and Eren can’t stop speaking, even though the words turn to sawdust as he says them. “Will you _please_ take me into the city so I can turn in my assignment?”

(“ _those of royal blood don’t_ beg _for anything_ ,” Eren had told him, the smell of sunflowers rising up with the heat from beneath his balcony. At that moment, and at every other moment in Eren’s life, it had been inescapably true.

In fact, it’s been true enough that Eren can’t remember saying ‘please’ to anyone of lower rank as long as he’s been alive.

And yet, for all that it leaves a sour taste in his mouth, for all that it goes against everything he’s been taught, for all that it’s a weakness that those of his blood should never have, it feels so _normal_ to say it just then. If anyone deserves that sort of deference, it would be Levi, he thinks.)

“Your Highness,” Levi sighs out Eren’s title with a downward whisper, his shoulders drooping just a little.

The dust left behind in his mouth is hard to swallow, but Eren manages before pushing forward, “it’s okay if you don’t want to. I can get there. But don’t tell anyone, because you’re right, my mother would lose her shit if she saw me dressed like this—“

“Your Highness.”

“—and I’d rather not have any of the Guard knowing I managed to navigate my way out of the palace wearing a T-shirt that took, like, two hours to find—“

“Your _Highness_.” It seems like even the bugs go quiet in that moment, the droning cut off by the way Levi throws Eren’s title upward, sharp and pointed like a firecracker. It stops whatever Eren had been preparing himself to say, turning it to vapor on his tongue.

“Yes?” he says, instead of anything that he’d been waiting to say.

“Can your bolt-holes get you to the palace garage?” There’s something gentle tracing its way over Levi’s lips, and the red beneath his cheeks is almost _glowing_. The sawdust that Eren had swallowed only moments before tastes a lot like soil just then, the perfume of flowers thick in his mouth, and threatens to rise back up, pushing against the backs of his teeth. It’s a wonder how the gardens manage to follow them wherever they go.

“Yeah,” Eren tells him. “They can get anywhere on the grounds. I found one that went out toward the stables, once.”

“Okay,” Levi says. “Then meet me there.”

His heart presses up against his ribs, still scrambling for purchase with claws like needles. “What?”

“Meet me in the garage. I’ll take you to the capital.” Levi’s smile lights his eyes from the inside, and the sun catches on them like lightning behind distant stormclouds. In this moment, Eren can believe everything he’s ever read in textbooks—surely this is what it means to be born from starstuff. Surely this is what the universe intended when it decided to breathe life into humans with the dying sighs of stars.

But Eren’s textbooks have never done the facts quite as much justice as Levi has.

“That was an... abrupt change,” Eren picks his word carefully, cleaning the remnants of garden blossoms from between his teeth.

Levi shrugs, sunlight billowing about his shoulders as if he’d made his clothes of it. “I never said _no_. I have assistants to help me with landscaping for a reason. And you asked nicely enough.” His head tilts to the side only slightly, but it scatters his hair just above his eyebrows. It makes Eren want to punch himself, makes him want to kill the bird beneath his ribs. “Besides, someone has to make sure you don’t get caught.”

“Oh,” Eren says, instead of reaching into his own chest and throwing his heart up and over the palace walls. “What makes you think I’d get caught?”

“You’re too prince-like.” Levi pulls his thick workman’s gloves from his hands, finger by finger, and dusts them off above the woven basket. “And you’ve got the most recognizable face in the country, if not the world, regardless of whether or not some nobody can see the sun on your forehead.” Eren can feel Levi’s eyes flicker over his face, can feel the weight of his attention like the brush of fingers. “You’ll fit in better if you’re not by yourself.”

“Oh,” he says again. The silence between them feels heavier without the background noise of bugs fluttering around them. It’s almost like they’re eavesdropping themselves. “I... shouldn’t’ve asked.”

Levi laughs, a soft thing, like the chuckle of the wind through leaves. “Your Highness, fucking _please_. It’s okay to want shit. You’ve been stir crazy since I met you. Get your shit together and meet me in the garage in twenty.”

The bird that had emerged from his heart chirps nervously, pecking against the underside of his sternum. His lungs feel too small, too filled with feathers, and it’s difficult to breathe. There’s honestly no reason that Levi should be taking this the way he is. There’s no reason that he shouldn’t be handling this favor like he’d handled their first meeting in the gardens. This had been a stupid request anyway, a _pipedream_.

And yet.

“Okay,” Eren says, making no comment on the fact that he’d just been given an order from someone who wasn’t even wearing the colors of his house. Gratitude makes his knees weak, makes his bones feel a little bit like rubber, and he speaks again. “Thank you. This means a lot to me.”

“I know,” Levi tells him, and for a moment his face is soft enough to be shockingly _young_. “It’s all over your face. Now get going. I have to stop by the staff dormitory before I meet you, and if anyone sees you dressed like that, you’ll be grounded for sure.” The hedge clippers get pushed into the plant-waste and Levi lifts the basket.

Eren laughs and it tastes like the gardens, the remnants of whatever words he’d had to swallow coughed free. “Yes _sir_.”

Levi pauses, one foot ready to take a step. “Oh. _Shit_. Fucking—I’m not telling you what to do. It’s basically a suggestion.”

It is then that Eren’s heart finds its footing. Another laugh throws itself outward, toward the palace wall, and he presses his fingers to his mouth to muffle it. He can feel something a lot like summertime spreading through his body.

“A suggestion. _Okay_. I’ll see you...” Eren takes a breath, takes a step back, takes—a moment. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes. I have to grab my shit from my room anyway.”

“Twenty minutes,” Levi echoes, his mouth twisted by a frown, a drop of sweat crawling down the line of his throat. “If we don’t drag our feet, neither one of us will have to explain why we’re there.”

There’s a pause between them and Eren hesitates. Levi, in turn, doesn’t move.

“You don’t have to do this,” Eren says, inhaling the smell of sunscreen. “I really—“

“Shut up,” Levi tells him, breaking the stillness that had grabbed them both as he steps forward, heading toward the wide expanse of the crape myrtle tree that Eren had hidden behind when the bugs were still singing. Eren falls into step behind him. “I don’t have to do this, and I know I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to do a lot of shit.” Levi glances over his shoulder, and his ears are going pink all over again, a symptom of the coming afternoon. “But I want to. And there’s a lot of shit you haven’t seen. So consider this payment for letting me see the gopher tunnels.”

“Payment,” Eren repeats, and there’s a stinging in his sinuses. It doesn’t—the verbiage doesn’t feel right. But Eren doesn’t know how to ask after what, exactly, he means, though the verbiage doesn’t feel right. And so he asks something else instead. “Have you _used_ the passages yet?”

Levi casts him a smile that reels Eren in like a fish. The uneasiness stirring beneath his skin gets muffled by it. A lot of things Eren thinks gets muffled by the way Levi wears his smiles.

“I’m not telling you,” Levi says, and it’s spoken like a secret.

Eren laughs as the palace guard makes their way back down the battlement, their shadow taking its place back upon the grass, making another around along the palace wall. But by then, the two of them are out of sight, and the palace itself is none the wiser.

-

(“ _i told you,_ ” Levi had said, the two of them tucked within the shadows of a passageway, the doorway into the garage cracked open only barely, the building’s artful brightness adding the illusion of natural lighting to the darkness around them, “ _you have the most recognizable face in the country._ ”

“ _if not the world_ ,” Eren had added, his eyebrows wiggling with a hint of mischief.

“ _you_ were _paying attention when i was speaking_.” Levi had offered out the straw sunhat held between his hands, and Eren had taken it, his thumbs skirting the closest edges in a too-gentle touch. “ _so you’re going to wear this as a precaution_.”

Eren had smiled, then—and like always, a thrill had prickled along his skin, had reached from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Moments like that one had been prizes, will always be prizes. The feeling had made his throat dry.

“ _so you’re a gardener and a master of disguise_ ,” Eren had said, and he’d looked the Prince that he is, even wrapped in shadows and a college boy’s clothes. “ _is this another one of those secret gardener club things?_ ”

“ _no_ ,” Levi had told him, had felt the urge for honesty rise hard and fast in his throat like the reflex to vomit. He’d swallowed it just the same. “ _my uncle and i were in theatre when i was younger. i learned some things that way_.”

“ _oh_ ,” Eren had said. He’d been saying it a lot, today. “ _i didn’t know you were an actor_.”

“ _i wasn’t, really_ ,” and that part, at least, hadn’t been a lie. “ _but i’d been good at my job_.”

There had been other questions working their way across Eren’s face, and Levi hadn’t given him any time to ask them. He’d shooed him up the stairs and through the doorway, making sure only to ensure that the hat was on Eren’s head before his sneakers touched the garage’s whitewashed floor.)

“Holy _shit_ ,” Eren breathes, turning a slow circle in the center of the university’s campus. It’s just them on the grass, the mist from a polished copper fountain casting a rainbow beside them, dusting Levi’s hair in water droplets. “Holy shit, there’s brickwork _everywhere._ ”

“Yeah,” Levi replies, admiring the way the hat frames the mess of Eren’s hair. It’s windswept and beautiful, tousled by the wind’s vicious fingers from the drive over, if only because he’d had himself halfway out the window of the truck, bracing his weight on one hand while he’d held the hat against his head with the other.

He’d been laughing the entire time, and Levi can still see remnants on his face—his mouth is still curved upward and his skin is glowing with its afterburn. It makes it difficult to think of anything else to say that doesn’t sound like a fucking love confession.

(It really is just Levi’s luck that the hat made to make Eren blend in just a _little_ bit better has only served to make his cheekbones look sharper, to make the white of his smile brighter and more distinct.

It really is just Levi’s luck that there isn’t anything on this whole fucking rock that would make Eren any less beautiful than he is by nature.

Maybe he’ll ask the Prince what the physics of that are, one day. Maybe Eren will tell him.)

“You know,” Eren says, turning in another circle, just as slowly as the first, though this time his hands are folded behind his back, a purple folder held gently in one of them, “Bärin University is actually the remnants of the first royal palace.”

Levi blinks. There’s mist on Eren’s eyelashes. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Eren’s fingers dance along the edges of a white rosebush, the pads of his fingers catching none of the thorns there. The buds aren’t as well taken care of as Levi had thought they would be. “I think it’s on the school’s website, but I heard it from Her Majesty first. She only ever said that the palace was damaged in the last war, but that was more than a century ago.” He pauses and the fountain babbles beside them, throwing sunlight in countless different directions. “They moved the palace so that the capital would be less likely to be attacked, or something.”

“Probably a good decision,” Levi replies absently, falling into step at Eren’s shoulder, keeping a slow pace beside him.

Eren’s voice is soft and faraway when he says, “yeah.” The breath of pause he takes is just as distant. And then, “it’s easy to attract trouble, otherwise.”

Ice settles at the bottom of Levi’s stomach, digging cold fingers into the rest of his body despite the summer still pulling at his skin. It feels like he’d been careless in a way he hadn’t been since they’d started whatever-this-is, and the hurt there is almost a mirror to the kind he’d heard before.

(“ _i remember some of them_ ,” Eren had told him once, the murmur of a bee the only other noise in the gardens at that moment. Even Levi’s heartbeat had gone quiet to let him speak. “ _the assassinations. the assassination attempts? whatever you want to call them._ ”

“ _attempts is pretty accurate_ ,” Levi had said. His throat had been tight with the memories crawling up his throat with inky tendrils.

“ _there’d been collateral damage, sometimes_.” His comment had gone unacknowledged, and Eren had just carried on speaking. “ _there was—_ “ He’d stopped, swallowed, and reconsidered. “ _it’s weird, how shit like that can happen, and i still want to get out and_ see _things. like i still want to go out and live, sometimes, even though that’s unfair._ ” He’d looked up at Levi from where he’d been sitting on the lowest stair of one of the gardens’ gazebos. The honeybee had taken a place inside the swathe of orange honeysuckle at the entrance to the alcove. “ _it’s pretty fucking selfish._ ”

That had been the only smile that Levi hadn’t found criminally breathtaking when Eren had worn it.)

“Do you think the old palace had passages to snoop through?” Eren asks, and Levi pretends that he wasn’t thinking of other things, pretends that he hadn’t wondered what it would be like to comfort Eren by dragging his fingers through his hair, or something just as stupid.

“It doesn’t matter,” Levi tells him. “Because we’re not here to find more places to play hide-and-seek, we’re here to turn in your, what, dissertation on the contents of the universe?” Eren laughs like he hadn’t just been thinking of darker things. “Do you even know where your professor’s office is?”

“ _Yes_.” He sounds equal parts indignant and amused, and the emotions go to war on his face. It’s a little bit hilarious. “I triple checked. The science building is this way, and physics shit is relegated to the top floor.” Eren gestures with the folder in the direction that they’d been walking, toward a wing of red brick buildings decorated with marble statues, crafted in the shape of bears, mid-lunge. “And it’s just a ten-page paper, not a _dissertation_.”

“Excuse me,” Levi replies, swallowing a snort and following after him when he changes course slightly. “I just haven’t written anything _that_ long before.”

Eren blinks, and Levi can still see hints of fountain droplets scattering sunlight on his eyelashes. “You didn’t go to school?”

He’d opened himself up for this question. There’s a part of him that had done it on purpose, had wanted to see Eren’s face open up like a flower in bloom, like it’s started doing when Levi gives him information like breadcrumbs. There’s a part of him that desperately wants to be honest—or at least wants to give Eren a piece of him to carry around.

(“ _i guess i wanted to share a little bit of my world with you, too_ ,” Eren had told him in his bedchambers not even nine days prior.

Levi wonders if that’s what all this is—leaving hints of what he might’ve been, taking the Prince on a daytrip that could get him killed if anyone were to know about it. He wonders if it’s sharing—or if he’s trying to bring Eren closer within his reach, so that next time there’s something on the Prince’s cheek, he’ll be able to wipe it away and know if his skin is as soft as it looks.)

“No,” Levi tells him the truth, and that time it isn’t hard. “I was trained by my uncle for his work and we traveled a lot. We didn’t do, like, _really_ badly, and we managed to always have a roof over our heads—hotels to stay in, a house to come back to, whatever the fuck. But we never made enough to send me to school, and at that point my personal training got the best of me and I didn’t _want_ to go to school.”

Eren hums, a soft sound to show that he’d heard. And then he says, “so how did you get in with your gardening cult?”

Levi laughs. It’s the combination of Eren’s delivery and the fact that they have a fucking _inside joke_ , like grade-schoolers or college roommates. It’s too normalizing and too dangerous to have, but he _loves_ it. He doesn’t think he’d be able to let that dumb joke go at knifepoint.

“In whatever free time I managed to get for myself, I took care of plants. Read books on it, learned a lot about climates as a result. Learned a lot about weather patterns too.”

 _it had been_ , Levi wants to say, but can’t bring himself to, _the way that i made peace with the shit i’d done. a plant after a job, so that way i wouldn’t be allowed to forget._

“Wow,” Eren grins wide, pushing the sunhat backward a little on his head to look at Levi properly. There’s _awe_ , or something like that, touching the corners of his eyes. “So you learned to work magic with plants by yourself? Like, where to put stuff and what looks good together and how to take care of them?”

“Yes?” Levi says. “It’s not really magic so much as an eye for aesthetic and attention.”

“And _effort_.” Eren turns away to take the concrete steps of the science building two at a time, twisting on his heel to watch Levi come after him. It’s something he’s been doing more, Levi has noticed—letting Levi walk behind him, though his discomfort is tight in his shoulders. “Don’t forget the almost _insane_ amount of effort you put into that stuff.”

“I guess,” Levi huffs softly as he reaches the top of the stairs, heading for the set of heavy wooden double-doors, complete with bronze-plated handles. He pulls it open and the air conditioning is a _blessing_. “But you’re giving it a dramatic flair that it doesn’t need.”

“Whatever,” Eren says, his own body leaning into the cool air when the door falls shut behind them, leaving any sounds from the outside world on the other side.

The hallways are just as empty as the campus had been. From what Levi remembers about students, there are a great many that avoid summer classes like a disease, and many others go back to their hometowns or provinces for the break between spring and fall. It feels, then, like it’s just the two of them exploring an ancient palace, though that is, of course, entirely unrealistic.

But Levi has found himself getting more unrealistic, these days.

“Your predecessors really loved stained glass,” Levi says into the quiet, keeping his voice soft. The loudest noise in the building is their footsteps as they make their way up a wide staircase, the foyer almost completely covered in multicolored sunlight streaming through windows on all sides.

“It seems like,” Eren agrees, taking a corner to take another set of stairs. “I think the most stained glass we have now is in the Sunlit Hall and the library. I think _those_ predecessors liked being able to check on the weather whenever they wanted.”

Levi snickers quietly, hiding the laughter against his knuckles. “Maybe. I wasn’t aware you had a family history of meteorologists.”

“Who knows?” Eren spreads his arms wide in a gesture that encompasses the top floor’s corridor. “A mystery.”

Levi shakes his head, Eren going silent beside him as he glances at room numbers and signage that will tell them if they’re going in the right direction. This close, Levi can still feel the heat of summer pushing itself away from Eren’s skin, as if the sun were trapped beneath it, and he can feel that same warmth blooming in his cheeks. It’s a reflex, borne from seeing the Prince covered in rainwater, cultivated through smiles and laughter that reach into Levi’s chest and pull out his lungs.

It’s amazing how affection like this can turn his stomach upside down just like nausea.

They turn down a narrow corridor, leaving behind the decorative, cracked-open doors of classrooms in favor of plainer ones, though there are labels on each one. Some of the offices have papers taped out front—either with words of wisdom or office hours written on them.

Eren stops outside one of the open offices, knocking on the door that’s opened inward. In the unnatural lighting, Levi can almost make out the outline of the sunburst on Eren’s forehead, and for the first time since they’d gotten into the truck back at the palace, he feels his nerves pulling taut.

“Come in,” says the person inside the office. Levi assumes that it’s Eren’s professor.

It’s only when Eren beckons him, a smile touching his mouth, that Levi moves forward, taking a position behind Eren’s right shoulder, shutting the office door behind him—as a precaution. It’s not necessarily a habit, not really, but it’s a tactic he’d picked up watching the bodyguards of targets, years and years before. It’s a skill that had made his job very difficult, when he’d been on the receiving end.

The alleged professor is bowed over their desk, brown hair pulled back into a style that’s a cross between a ponytail and a bun. There are glasses falling down their nose, though it’s a slow process, and it’s not until they have to push them back into place that they lift their head at all.

“Oh,” the professor blinks and their eyes are like copper.

“Hi, Dr. Zoe,” Eren replies, and there’s a shift in his posture—his shoulders roll back, his feet ease just a little bit farther apart, and he’s a—this isn’t the right description. He’s a _Prince_ , he’s been a Prince all day, all week, all his life. But there’s—a wall. There’s the acknowledgement of _difference_ , of status, and Levi hadn’t noticed how Eren _isn’t_ that way, when it’s just the two of them. It’s like being punched, a little.

“Your Highness,” Dr. Zoe smiles wide, the status-difference bothering them very little, if at all. “This is a surprise! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here.”

“You haven’t,” Eren confirms, resting the folder he’d been holding against the desk, just to the left of the stack of papers that had held the professor’s attention as they’d walked in. “I thought about emailing it to you, but I wanted to make sure you knew I had the paper done.”

Dr. Zoe laughs, leaning back in their chair. “Ha! You’ve never given me any late work. Sometimes I give you late grades, and yet here you are, making me feel bad about it. Is it a regal thing, keeping deadlines like that?”

Levi speaks without thinking. “Pretty sure it’s common courtesy.”

Their eyebrows rise above the rim of their glasses, and their smile gets wider. “He’s new,” they say, their eyes flickering between the two of them slowly. “A recruit? Inductee? A Guardsman, maybe?”

“No.” The sunhat sits on Eren’s head like his circlet just then, as he tilts his head and smiles. “He’s a friend of mine. We’re kind of on a secret adventure.”

(Something palpitates inside his chest, like change rattling around in a plastic container. It makes whatever-they-have real, almost. It makes this entire excursion _real_.

Levi almost expects to wake up in the gardens, the smell of countless flowers swaying around his head.)

Their eyebrows rise higher and they hold Eren’s gaze without an ounce of discomfort. It could be a habit they’d formed during lessons, or it could just be what Dr. Zoe is like. Levi can’t confirm or dispute either one, but it makes his bones scrape together when he moves.

“So your retinue is small because your retinue doesn’t know you’re here.”

“Effectively.”

Dr. Zoe leans forward, resting their elbows on their desk—or, rather, on top of papers and folders that are on top of the desk. The paper crackles beneath their weight.

“So what do you think of the campus?”

“It’s nice.” Eren pauses, shifts his weight between his feet, and blinks slowly. He’s considering what to say next. Levi has seen the expression enough to know. “So you won’t tell anyone you saw me here, right? It would look bad.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dr. Zoe shakes their head, disrupting strands of their hair that are already displaced. “And ruin the peace and quiet of summer classes with people scrambling for a picture to put online? For autographs? Think of the noise, Your Highness. I’d have students flocking from the labs and I’d lose an endless amount of data. No one will never know you stepped foot onto this campus, much less my _office_.”

A muscle in Eren’s jaw relaxes, and that’s the only indication that he’d been concerned at all. “You’re the best.”

“Of course I am!” They sweep their arms wide, almost sending a stack of papers to the floor. It looks to be something that happens often, judging by the quick-fix of Dr. Zoe lifting their knee to hold the papers in place. “You’re lucky to have me, just like I am grateful for the honor of teaching the heir to the throne.”

Eren snickers to himself, his nose twitching with the effort of keeping it quiet. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Such is the duty of a citizen,” Dr. Zoe says. It would be sharper from anyone else, maybe. But there’s nothing in their expression that looks to be bitter or affronted. In fact, their expression is so fond in that moment that it makes Levi wonder just how long they’d been teaching the Prince.

It makes Levi wonder further if that T-shirt Eren wears to sleep had been a gift from them.

“Good luck with your papers, Dr. Zoe.”

The smile they give Eren takes a year or two off their face, though it sharpens the laugh-lines around their mouth. Their eyes glitter as they glance again between the two of them, their attention lingering on Levi for a heartbeat too long.

“Good luck with your adventure, Your Highness. I’ll see you next week. Try not to get into any mischief that you wouldn’t want on the news.”

“As long as they get my good side,” Eren says, already backing toward the door. Levi steps aside to open it, following Eren out with a goodbye brief enough to qualify as rude in almost any other situation. Dr. Zoe, as a credit to their character, doesn’t seem to mind, a goodbye of their own following them down the corridor as they make their way back to the staircase. Their footsteps echo in the empty atrium.

Neither of them says anything until the summer heat drops its weight back onto them when they step outside, the doors falling shut behind them. A butterfly settles atop the ear of one of the bear statues, taking a moment of rest in the shade of the brick building.

“Your professor seems... excitable,” Levi says.

“Yeah,” Eren agrees, adjusting the hat upon his head. “They’ve been like that since they started teaching me.”

“That’s a lot of energy.” Levi pauses, watching a single car make its way down one of the campus’ service roads. “It suits you, probably.”

“ _Probably_ ,” and Eren’s laughing his way down the steps and onto the grass beneath them, the shade left behind like a discarded garment. “Are you calling me excitable or energetic?”

“Both.” Levi stretches his arms above his head, feeling his bones pop into an alignment he hadn’t even known they were out of. “You had your head out the window the whole drive here, and you haven’t been able to stop touching things since we stepped on campus.”

It’s lucky, Levi thinks. It’s lucky that no one is around to hear Eren laugh like that, to watch his body move with it, to watch it work its way down his shoulders and tremble toward his ankles. It’s lucky that no one gets to see the way his hair shifts and the way one cheek dimples. If anyone had, it might’ve blinded them. If anyone had, they’d’ve seen something truly spectacular.

If anyone had, Levi might’ve had cause to get a little jealous.

“I’ve never seen the capital with so much as a rolled down window,” Eren replies, his voice like something poetic just then—like freshly opened champagne, all bubbles and bittersweetness. But, then, Levi’s never been as adept with words as some people. “It’s _fancy_. I like it. There are people _everywhere._ ” A pause, and then, “well, not here, but, like, _in_ the city.”

“You basically live in a small city.”

“But not _this_ one,” Eren says, arms thrown wide as if to embrace everything in front of him at once. “I live so fucking close to this place, and I’ve never really seen it, and it’s _awesome_.” His pace slows when they pass the admissions building, the sound of city traffic creeping its way closer, cracking the image of the pristine former-palace at the edges.

When Eren stops walking completely, Levi stops beside him.

“Something on your mind?” Levi asks, when Eren says nothing, the sigh of summer adoring the ends of his hair as he watches the traffic just outside the delineation of ‘campus.’ It takes a moment for Eren to reply, and then it takes two, but Levi supposes he has the time. There really is nothing quite like the view of Eren’s profile to make his patience worthwhile.

“Can we get something to eat before we go?” It’s asked quietly, almost directed at the ground itself, and it’s almost like the Prince had been ashamed to ask it.

Levi finds his mind recoiling at the thought instantaneously, but he bites his tongue and waits for the right words to take their place in his mouth. They shift and rearrange while Eren shifts beside him, keeping his eyes forward.

“The university is almost a ghost town,” Levi says carefully. “Restaurants are entirely different. Just because there aren’t a shitload of students here, doesn’t mean that there aren’t people outside. Someone could see you, and—“ _there’s no face quite like yours_ almost falls from Levi’s tongue. The urge stops him, makes him clear his throat. “It’d be dangerous if people knew they could get to you in the city.”

“You know, the first attempt I remember is one that was in my own fucking house, so if someone wants to kill me so bad—“ Eren lifts one hand to his mouth, pressing his fingers hard against his lips, and for a moment his skin goes almost gray. Levi thinks he might vomit, that he might cough up blood, that he might cry—and Levi isn’t sure how to comfort him. But then Eren swallows and shakes his head. “I’m not asking to sit in somewhere. We can eat when we’re out of the city. I’ll even give you my card to buy it with.”

Pedestrians move in steady streams on either side of the street, just within view but not close enough to gauge any sort of detail. It’s a safe assumption that none of them can see the Prince from there either.

And besides, it’s not like this trip wasn’t risky from the start.

“Do you have something you’re in the mood for? You sound pretty dead-set on something that you don’t get to eat at home, so it can’t be cheesecake, or pizza, or lamb, or whatever it is princes eat.” Eren glances at him, and his face still hasn’t gotten its color back. Something heavy is curling around his pupils, like water circling a drain—or like light, circling a black hole.

“Chili-cheese fries,” Eren says. “I would gladly lay down my life for chili-cheese fries. I saw a place on the way in the city, _and_ they have a drive-thru, and I want my arteries to hate me in a couple hours.”

Levi finds himself laughing like he always does. It’s a half-solved mystery, the way Eren can do that, can speak his mind with absolute conviction and deliver it with the intensity of a man on trial and it’s enough to have Levi in fits.

 “Okay. You’re buying us chili-cheese fries. We’ll stop on the road and eat it in the car.” If they were normal—if they were two nobodies on a trip from the city’s outskirts, just wandering around for fun—Levi would bump their elbows, maybe ruffle his hair. But the only nobody here is Levi, and even when no one in the immediate vicinity knows who they are, it would feel like a crime to touch him that way.

Levi starts walking first this time and Eren follows after him after two breaths’ hesitation. When Eren speaks from behind him, it’s only at the volume of distant rain.

“Thanks, Levi.” Another pause, and traffic gets louder as they make their way toward one of the hidden parking lots, lined with closely-grown vine maples. “Sorry.”

“For what?” The truck they’d taken is one of four cars in the parking lot, and is the only one parked a generous distance away from everyone else. The royal crest on the bottom left corner of the windshield made the need for a faculty parking decal moot.

“I yelled at you.” Levi turns to look at him and finds Eren watching him with eyes he’d never seen before. He looks _upset_. “I was getting angry about safety measures and shit that isn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair. So I’m sorry.”

“The Queen Regent would be beside herself if she saw you scraping to apologize to a gardener,” Levi says softly. “And it’s not something you need to be sorry for, anyway. We all go stir-crazy, and we all hope that maybe learning to fight or use swords or go for walks will help with that, but it doesn’t. Why do you think I planted so many fucking sunflowers? That shit took _hours_. Days! It took forever, but it got me out of the palace when I was working on them.”

Eren drops his eyes and twists his lips and Levi wants to smooth over them with his thumb to coax them into relaxation.

“Eren,” Levi takes a step forward and the Prince doesn’t move, “the only thing you asked for was chili-cheese fries. It’s not something that you need to say sorry for.”

It’s only after he says it that he realizes his mistake—his _transgression_. Eren lifts his gaze from the pavement, eyebrows arching high onto his forehead, and his mouth falls open, just a little. In a rush, all the color comes back to his face, highlighted further by the deep red that his cheeks are going. Levi can’t tell if he’s about to be punched, or thrown to the ground, or—something. He can’t tell if Eren’s angry, or not.

“Um,” Eren says. And stops.

“I’m— _fuck_ , I’m so—sorry.” Levi retracts the step he’d taken closer, and then takes another backward, bumping against the back of the car.

It’s a line that Levi hadn’t considered himself crossing, for all the boundaries that he’d allowed himself to walk through without so much as a second-thought. Just because he’d been thinking of him by his name since the moment they met doesn’t mean he’d ever considered using it. And he doesn’t know how to explain how he’d managed to make such an elementary, _ridiculous_ mistake.

( _you look so beautiful like that_ , Levi wants to say—could say. _you look so beautiful, so relaxed_.

But none of that is what he’d mean, if he were to say it. No, what he would mean if he were to say any excuse out loud, if he were to say what he was fighting to get up and out of his throat is _you look like you’re within reach when you’re dressed this way. you look like i could touch you and get away with it._

It seems that no matter how many times Levi tells himself that a Prince is a Prince, his brain doesn’t accept it as a fact.

His heart accepts it even less.)

“I’m sorry. That was—out of line. _Way_ out of—sorry.” Levi pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing his eyes shut. “Fucking hell.”

“Levi.” Eren’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a distance, like he’s shouting into a windstorm that has risen up around his ears. “It’s okay.”

“I’m pretty sure in an earlier age, my tongue would’ve been cut out and fed to me.”

Eren’s laughter cuts through the noise in his head better than his voice alone had. “That’s fucking gross. Levi, look at me.”

It takes more than three heartbeats for Levi to drop his hands and open his eyes with a sigh, and he finds Eren much closer than he had been when he’d shut them.

It’s unfair, a little.

“It’s okay,” Eren continues, and the color in his cheeks crawls toward his ears and down his throat. “I—I know that it’s, like, not...” He shrugs and it’s—nervous. It’s a nervous shrug. “No one’s—there are a couple people who—“ Another pause, another shrug, and then, “I like how that sounded. My name. You can—it’s just us. It’s just us, a lot of the time, and—“ Eren lifts a hand to rub at the back of his own neck, jostling the sunhat on his head slightly. “You don’t have to be sorry for that.”

“I’m an asshole,” Levi says, “but I know that some rules are in place for a reason.”

“Like not leaving the palace?” Eren’s face is so soft and so gorgeous, and with the university behind him he looks for all the world _exactly_ like the normal college student that he wishes he was. “Like bowing to your bluebloods? Like seeing a Prince in sweatpants? Like knowing a secret way into a royal’s benchamber?”

Despite the fact that he is almost sure he’s going to puke, Levi smiles. “You’re making a point here, I’m getting that.”

And still Eren keeps talking, though there’s a smile that’s stretching his own lips wide. “I’ve never felt more myself than when I’m with you. So I think that this is just... how things were going to be, anyway.”

“You’re a troublemaker,” Levi tells him, and knows that’s only a fraction of what he wants to say. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“You have _no_ idea,” Eren replies, and Levi feels the smile he’s given like a punch to the gut and a kick in the teeth at the same time.

“Oh,” Levi pushes his voice through the straw of his throat. “I think I can guess.”

(They end up eating chili-cheese fries while sitting on the fence that separates the road from the field of sunflowers that Levi had planted himself every year since he’d been employed at the palace. It’s dangerous to sit here so calmly, but then this entire afternoon had been so far.

“ _i have a question_ ,” Eren says, and a particularly enthusiastic gust of wind rippiles the straw hat on his head but doesn’t steal it.

“ _you’re going to ask it anyway_ ,” Levi replies, stabbing a chunk of the fries with his plastic fork. “ _so ask._ ”

“ _fall’s coming,_ ” Eren winds a string of melted cheese around his own fork. “ _and you said that you have to replant the sunflowers every year._ ”

“ _i did say that, yeah_.”

“ _so_ ,” Eren swings his legs gently, making the fence tremble, despite the thickness of the wood they’re sitting on. “ _i was wondering if i could help you plant it this coming spring_.” There are insects droning in the field somewhere. Levi thinks his heart might be humming a similar sound beneath his ribs. “ _if you need an excuse for it, my birthday’s in the spring_.”

“ _the whole palace knows when your birthday is,_ ” Levi replies. “ _but i’m not going to use your manual labor as a birthday gift._ ” He hooks the toe of one of his workboots behind the lowest horizontal post of the fence. “ _but if you’re sure you still want to by the time spring comes, i’d be happy to have you_. _with all that sword shit you do, you should have calluses to spare._ ”

Eren laughs and the insects sing loudly, rattling their wings or whatever it is that they use to sing with. “ _i do, i think, yeah_.” He pauses to chew another bite of food, the sigh coming from his nose just this side of euphoric. “ _i have another favor._ ”

“ _i’m all ears. it’s not like you’re about to ask me to go to a fucking department store now that the city is in the opposite direction_.”

Eren snorts, shaking his head. “ _no. i wouldn’t know what to buy, anyway. i have a tailor, remember?_ ” A second pause, and then, “ _can you say my name again?_ ”

Levi can’t swallow with his heart blocking his throat like it is. “eren _, you’re going to get me into trouble if you keep asking for favors like that._ ”

Eren’s smile is small, and there’s something hanging from the corners of his lips and it looks a little bit like sadness. “ _don’t worry. i can keep us both out of shit_.”

He laughs, a little bit, and sets his fork against the side of the Styrofoam container. His mouth is alive with the taste of the Prince’s name, spoken aloud, and he can feel something terrifying rising from the marrow of his bones.

He doesn’t say his next thought out loud, but he’s certain that this is what love tastes like, knows this for an absolute fact. Love tastes summer time and the name of a prince, the echo of laughter burning at his tonsils, the muted whisper of ugly memories going silent under Eren’s attention.

Love tastes a lot like this moment. And the next one. And the next. As long as Eren’s in them.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A writer,” comes from behind him, spoken softly but still audible, and Eren’s skin almost peels away from his body in his surprise. It’s a reflex that turns him on his heel, that brings his arms up in a defensive position even as his feet shift to allow himself to launch into an offensive strike at a moment’s notice. It’s borne from years of teaching, of long mornings and sore muscles, of—
> 
> As Eren sees Levi standing there, cupped within the circle of light created by one of the streetlamps, he feels his reflexes bleeding out of the soles of his feet and into the ground beneath them. Any training he’d ever had at all bleeds out of him, leaving him frozen on one side of the footbridge with Levi on the other, holding Eren’s thermos between his hands.
> 
> “What?” Eren says, his arms falling to hang by his sides, useless and unmoving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, listen, before you read below, i just need you to trust me.
> 
> godspeed, friends.

(It had been the first time Eren had followed him into his dreams since childhood, and it was as if a dam had broken inside his heart.

Or maybe it was more like watching the floodwaters rise from a dam that had burst long before.

It wasn’t the first time Levi had seen the gardens in his sleep. After spending so much of his time at the palace there, it was only natural—and so perhaps it was only natural that he would find Eren there, tucked against the arm of one of the countless stone benches, his knees brought against his chest with his cheek resting upon his knees.

It might be that it was only natural, too, that even the sunlight from Levi’s dreams hung about his shoulders like a cloak, brushing against his jawline with reverent fingers. And certainly it was only natural that Levi was left without any breath in his lungs, that the world tilted sharply when Eren lifted his eyes from the packed earth beneath Levi’s feet, that his heart scrambled for some traction inside his chest and found nothing.

It had been absolutely natural that when Levi looked at Eren, he saw stars.

“ _you’re here early_ ,” Levi had said, watching Eren’s body unfold on the stone bench as he shifted against it. “ _isn’t there someone you have to kick around this morning?”_

Eren’s nose had wrinkled and his circlet had been missing. It might’ve been that moment that Levi had known he was dreaming, and yet he’d found himself moving forward anyway, pulled in by gravity, by a smile heavy with something drowsy, by the sunburst tattooed to the Prince’s forehead.

“ _you always talk about me like i just go around assaulting people,”_ Eren had said, and his voice had been the whisper of sand against marble, as if he’d been telling a secret. _“do i seem like a mob boss to you?”_

“ _no_ ,” Levi had told him, and dropped himself on the bench beside him, “ _you seem like a prince to me._ ”

His nose had wrinkled again. It had looked as if his skin was glowing. “‘too prince-like,’” he’d said, an echo of a phrase Levi himself had said. Something had danced across his face and disappeared, and for a moment, Levi had forgotten entirely that it was a dream at all. Eren had looked so real just then. “ _okay, so, hypothetically, what if i wasn’t a prince. like, for a second. what would i seem like then?_ ”

Everything had gone very still. The gardens, the distant sounds of droning bugs, Levi’s heart. Eren’s eyes had been too green, his skin had been dark with feeling, with intensity rising into his cheeks. He’d parted his lips to take a breath, and his eyelashes had kissed his cheeks when he’d blinked.

Levi had leaned forward. He’d leaned forward, because none of it was real anyway, because whatever lines existed in the waking world weren’t present there.

And, after all, it was only natural that he gravitate toward the sun. Even sunflowers know to follow its journey across a clouded sky.

The air between them had been warm and heavy, though a breeze rustled its way through the creeping phlox around them. Levi had been able to feel the ghost of his own breath when he’d been close enough, had been able to feel the hitch in Eren’s own.

He’d dreamt the Prince tasted like salted sunflowers and coffee beans.)

When Levi breathes in, he can taste the coming autumn, even though the season is still at least another week away, even though the morning still feels heavy with the warmth of late-summer. It doesn’t chase away the memories of his dream from the night before, but it’s effective enough to keep his hand from shaking as he holds the plastic watering can above the swathe of bachelor’s button, moving it back and forth in even strokes along the stone gazebo’s base.

The sigh of the water against flower petals and the whisper of a turning page are the only sounds between himself and the Prince. The palace is alive around them, though sunrise hadn’t been more than two hours ago, and even that is muffled by the depth of their hiding place, pressed up against the library like it is.

“Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you didn’t work here?” As Eren’s voice walks across the space between them, the not-silence breaks in the way thin ice does, cracking in the middle to give glimpses of the water beneath.

It’s part of Eren’s nature to ask questions without context, just like it’s part of Levi’s nature to huff his hair from his forehead and lift his eyes from the flowers, bowing their heads beneath the water’s weight—just like it’s part of Levi’s nature to give Eren his undivided attention with a sigh and a murmur of, “what?”

“Do you ever think of not working here?” Eren’s eyes are on the novel he’d brought with him into the gardens. His circlet is throwing the early morning sun around the gazebo, casting flickering beads onto the dirt beneath the stairs. “Like, not being a gardener here. Being a gardener somewhere else.”

The softer soil beneath the bachelor’s button huffs when Levi rests his plastic watering can upon it, wiggling the stiffness from his fingers. “Not really,” he says. “I haven’t thought about working anywhere else in _years_. I guess I could’ve done landscaping on school campuses. There _were_ some sparsely decorated areas at your university yesterday. But I’d miss the gardens. I’d miss the kitchens. I’d miss Isabel. And Farlan. ” There’s a hitch between one of Levi’s breaths and the next, even though his thoughts cling to one another, uninterrupted. _And you_ , he wants to say—but the words are getting stuck in his throat, pressing up against his tonsils. And so he says instead, “besides, who would keep you occupied out here? The bees?”

“I hear bees are _great_ company.” Eren’s thumb is toying with the edge of one of the novel’s pages. It’s not a new angle for either of them—the Prince often takes a place on gazebo steps when they’re in the gardens together, just like Levi often finds himself taking care of the plants around them. It usually gives him a view of the top of Eren’s head, usually lets him admire the stretch of Eren’s legs out in front of him, usually makes for the perfect opportunity to watch the way the gardens curve themselves around him as if he was made to be held inside them.

But there’s something different about today, even as the conversation feels normal, even as this entire _scene_ feels normal. It’s like there’s a shadow pulling at the corners of Eren’s mouth, wrapping itself around the base of his throat, and Levi isn’t really sure where it came from, or what it’s doing there. From here, it reminds him a lot of a noose.

He takes a step away from the flowers, leaving the watering can in the gazebo’s shade as he takes a seat beside Eren on the steps, stretching his legs out and curling his toes inside his workboots. They’re close enough that Levi can smell the shade on him, can smell the remnants of honey and vanilla, can taste the lingering weight of coffee, sitting in a thermos on Eren’s other side.

If Levi’s palm wasn’t pressed to the gazebo’s floor, he’s certain that his fingers would be trembling.

“I’ve never had any problem with bees,” Levi tells him, and from this close it just looks like the shade is curling around his body in a gentle posture, with none of the violence of fingers curling above his collarbones. “They’re probably pretty social. But I don’t know if I’d leave you in their _care_.”

Eren’s scoff ruffles the pages of his novel, losing the place he’d been holding with a finger. “Can you imagine? Being babysat by _bees_.”

Levi snorts, feeling a smile pulling at his mouth. “Are you comparing me to a babysitter?”

“Aren’t you doing that _yourself?_ ” It feels like an accusation, the way Eren’s words cut across his cheek like that, and it doesn’t feel _right_. It doesn’t feel like this conversation should’ve been heading this way—it hasn’t even been long enough to turn so sharply, and Levi can almost see the shadows pull themselves taut against Eren’s pulse. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”

Levi arches his eyebrows, feels his heart kick against his the inside of his chest. “Is there a new addition to my job description that I haven’t heard of? Did I accidentally join the Guard in my sleep? I’ve never been told I sleepwalk but, you know, there’s a first time for everything.”

Eren’s lips are pressed into a hard line, going bloodless with his effort. There’s a muscle working in his jaw, and Levi can almost hear the words being ground beneath his back molars, can almost see their edges digging into the meat of his cheek. If he were to speak just then, Levi’s sure his words would slap onto the dirt, layered over with a thin coat of blood.

Levi could touch him, if he’d wanted to. He could card his fingers through Eren’s hair, could drag his knuckles along the curve of his cheek, could lift his hand from the gazebo floor and lace their fingers together. There are a lot of things he could do just then, to soothe away the tension coiling beneath Eren’s skin.

But he chooses to do none of them, curling his fingers against the stone instead.

“Eren.” The taste of the Prince’s name isn’t familiar yet, but its weight is still a comfort in his mouth, still soothes the nerves that are rising to claw at the back of his tongue. “What’s on your mind?”

There’s a sort of magic in the way Eren reacts when Levi says his name, and four days after their daytrip to the capital, Levi still hasn’t found himself getting used to it. Eren’s eyelids flutter and his mouth relaxes, his fingers easing their deathgrip on the novel between his hands. With one shoulder, Eren leans his weight against the closest column, the soles of his feet firmly planted on the stone stair beneath his dress boots.

When he speaks, there are flecks of gold clinging to his eyelashes, the sun highlighting the deep brown of his hair. “Nothing’s on my mind.” He lets his lie hover between them, buoyed up on the daytime’s warmth, rising up from the dirt and prickling against Levi’s throat. Eren’s lie stays there almost long enough that Levi could pluck it out of the air, could hold it in his palm and hand it over so Eren could take it back. But then he says, “what do you think I’d be doing? If I wasn’t a prince.”

 Levi pauses, and he feels the weight of it like a stone in his throat.

(“ _what if i wasn’t a prince,_ ” the Eren from his dreams had said. “ _what would i seem like then?_ ”)

“That’s a tough one,” is what he ends up saying instead of giving into the urge to lick his lips, instead of leaning forward and closing the space between them with only his heart to provide background noise. “It’s hard not to see a prince in you.”

Something relaxes on Eren’s face. It loosens his lips and softens the curve of his shoulders—and it’s beautiful. _Everything_ the Prince does is beautiful, everything he does makes Levi’s heart skid against his sternum, even when he looks so fucking _lonely_.

He’s always looked lonely, but it feels like it’s been ages since he’s looked that way when they’ve been _together_.

“Yeah,” Eren says, and it’s the sigh of a summer on its last legs, the murmur of a storm system on its way over an open field. “That was a stupid question.”

It feels like there’s still thin ice beneath Levi’s toes, as if it’s been sitting between them since Eren had started speaking. It bends under Levi’s weight, hairline fractures spreading out around them, threatening to dump them both into freezing water. In the stillness of the gardens, Levi thinks he can almost hear the way the quiet begins to crumble.

He’d said the wrong thing, took a wrong step, and whatever _thing_ Eren is holding underneath his tongue is sitting between them, curling around them both like an unseasonable fog.

“That’s not what I said.” Levi takes the conversation backward, steps off of the ice, and it feels like his breath should be coming out on a cloud of white, despite the distinctness of late-summer still pushing against the flowered walls of the alcove. “I just said it’s _tough_ , not impossible. We can’t _all_ be as graceful and regal as you.”

The thing that Eren won’t talk about squirms against the gazebo floor, shapeless and nameless, but real enough that Levi can almost feel it press itself against the tips knuckles. It makes the hairs rise on his arms, makes bile rise in his throat, makes it difficult to breathe in the worst way. He doesn’t know what happened between the capital and now—they’d been fine. They’d been _better_ than fine. It’s felt as if he’s had wings on his heels, as if his toes couldn’t even touch the ground from floating. It’s felt like rising from a dungeon and seeing the sun for the first time in ages.

It’s felt a lot like looking at a newborn universe, cupped between the palms of his own hands.

“Eren,” Levi tries again, watches Eren’s eyelids flutter for the second time, “what’s bothering you so much?”

When Eren inhales, it gets stolen by the breeze pushing its way through the alcove, causing the flowers to whisper together—but in the almost-silence, it sounds like it’s twisting into a death rattle.

It feels like the end of something.

“I don’t think we should meet up anymore,” Eren says, and when Levi breathes in, there’s tar in his lungs. There’s a burning beneath his sternum, as if he’d been set fire from the inside and it’s working its way outward, peeling the skin from his bones. There’s something he should be saying, here. There are _countless_ somethings he should be saying, but his windpipe won’t cooperate, his heart won’t beat properly, and everything coming from his mouth is nothing more than a wheeze.

Breathing _hurts_ , and so when Levi speaks the only thing he can say that won’t scar his tongue is, “ _excuse_ me?”

“You know how it goes,” Eren tells him, and his voice is the reflective surface of a frozen lake. The only indication that he can feel the splitting ice spreading out around them is the tremor in his hands as he turns his novel in circles—over and over and over. “Bluebloods get bored, and I’m not having fun anymore.”

Levi’s cheek stings as if he’d been slapped with an open palm. “That’s—that’s absolute bullshit!” His breath is coming back in pieces, and each one is rattling around inside his chest, chipping away at his ribs. He’s been _blindsided_ , he’s been knocked off his feet because this shouldn’t be happening. Not after—not after... “You’re full of _shit!_ ”

“I’m sorry,” Eren says, and as he stands the gardens seem to shift around him, curling closer to avoid letting him go. Levi thinks he can relate to that. “But you’re right, you know? You never did apply for a babysitting position.” If this had been any other moment, if Eren wasn’t trying to wear any other face than his own, his mouth would’ve twisted just then. “The pay wouldn’t be worth it anyway.”

(“ _excuse me,”_ Eren had said in the gardens too-long ago, and his voice had been sharp enough to cut glass, to cut _stone_ , and it was as if he’d been covered in thorns. “ _do we know each other?_ ”

He’d been hurt, had said as much with his body, with his posture, with the way he’d spoken.

And this is feels much the same—except there isn’t even hurt hanging on Eren’s features, this time around. There’s nothing held in his expression at all.)

“ _Eren_ ,” when Levi stands, it’s a wonder he doesn’t fall over for how much his legs want to dump him to the dirt, “what the _fuck_ are you talking about?”

Color is rising into Eren’s cheeks, darkening the already deep brown of his skin. Something that looks a lot like lightning flickers in his eyes, curling around his pupils, and this time when he breathes in, Levi can hear it. It sounds like a steadying breath, an inhalation deep enough to disturb the plants around them.

“I don’t want to see you anymore.” Eren’s voice cracks, in the middle. Or, maybe that’s not the right way to put it. It goes more like this: his breath hitches just before, and his voice breaks, falling apart just long enough to make the ‘ _you’_ nothing but a puff of air, scattering its fragments by the toes of his own boots.

“You’re a fucking liar,” Levi tells him, watches as the words press themselves against the column of his throat.

Eren blinks slowly, and it brings to mind the image of a cat like it always does, makes Levi wonder what words are running through his head just then. And then he says, “I’m a prince,” like his voice had never broken heartbeats before.

He could fix this, he _knows_ he could fix this. He just—there are words he needs, and he can’t find them. It’s him and Eren and the nothing inside his mouth, the silence stretching between them a thick and ugly thing. It’s clinging to his clothes, crawling up his and over the toes of his boots, leaving a film against his skin.

“As you were,” the Prince says, and he looks for all the world like the man who’d been alone in a sea of palace guards, surrounded by the unbreakable shell of rank.

It was a rare thing for Eren to offer anyone his back, at the beginning. He’d walked at Levi’s shoulder, his hands folded behind his back. But now he turns and Levi can see the curve of his shoulders, rigidity of his spine, the absolute perfection of his posture—and he watches the Prince disappear through a tunnel of clematis blossoms, the stone lattice throwing its own shadows against the finery of his clothes.

By the time Levi can find it in himself to move, there’s only empty air to reach for, perfumed by clematis blossoms and bachelor’s button, heavy with the last vestiges of summer humidity.

(“ _can you say my name again?_ ” Eren had asked him, perched on the fence between the sunflower field and the single road leading toward the palace. The breeze had been playing with what little of his hair it could reach beneath the hat he’d worn, and the sunflowers had been swaying behind him, sighing as if with envy. The sun had been sitting at an afternoon height, had been casting gentle streams of summertime against them both, had been in a sky almost completely cloudless—

And yet Levi could’ve sworn that there was more light bursting from beneath Eren’s skin than from anywhere else. The sunflowers at his back had agreed, their faces turned toward the Prince himself.

It might’ve been then that Levi knew he could deny Eren nothing, not when he’d asked it like that.

But that makes him a liar too, doesn’t it? After all, he knows that he can’t give him this—he knows it, deep within the marrow of his bones.)

-

(“ _what’s this?_ ” Eren’s fingers had been poised against the bachelor’s button, the blossom brushing it’s petals against his fingertips. It had been warm enough that he could feel the sun even at his fingertips, could feel it crawling its way down his spine. “ _it’s very... blue._ ”

“ _artful_ ,” Levi had replied, standing beside him, and from this angle he’d looked hand-carved and glorious, like gods had shaped him with loving hands, had put the power of universes inside the stormclouds of his eyes. “ _they’re called a lot of things. bachelor’s button, cornflowers, bluebottles, hurtsickles. poetic shit._ ”

“ _where do names like that even come from?_ ” Eren had asked, had watched the way Levi’s mouth curved into a smile so soft that his fingers had burned to touch it.

“ _depends on the flower._ ” Levi had rested the toe of his boot gently against the blue face of one flower, holding it still against the momentum of his movement. “ _these used to be worn by single men. if the flower faded too quickly, then their love wasn’t returned_.”

Eren had paused, had let his thumb linger against the flower petals, had felt something rising up at the back of his throat that had threatened to choke him. His fingers had started to shake against the bachelor’s button and his stomach had twisted violently enough to almost make him vomit.

“ _that’s depressing_ ,” he’d said, speaking to the dirt and leaving his words there for the flowers to watch over. “ _i’m pretty sure i don’t like that story. maybe gardeners should get new material._ ”

“ _i’ll suggest it at the next militant gardener’s club meeting_ ,” Levi had told him, had let his words lay beside Eren’s to bask in the dappled combination of the sunlight and the shade. Something had fluttered beneath his ribcage, had made his tongue feel heavy in his mouth. “ _but the story is only sad if the love isn’t requited._ ”

Eren hadn’t known what to say to that. And so he hadn’t said anything at all.)

Jean coughs when he hits the sawdust, his body going limp against the dirt as he tries to catch his breath. The lamps scattered around the training yard cut through nighttime darkness, stretching Jean’s shadow toward the palace, layered over by Eren’s own. It’s with a grunt that Jean rolls onto his stomach and pushes himself upright, dusting sawdust from his backside.

Fireflies blink slowly in the deeper shadows of the training yard, abandoned this late at night.

Eren shifts his weight between his feet before sliding back into an offensive position. “Again.”

Jean huffs out a breath, moving his own body in a defensive mirror. “What, four wins isn’t enough for you? You need to make it an easily divisible five, or is that just a personal preference?”

Everything Eren says burns his tongue. “Can we skip the shit-talk and just go to the part where you try and punch me?”

The tension leaves Jean’s body with a sigh as the two of them begin to circle one another. The dirt beneath their feet is dry and clinging to their boots, and pieces of sawdust are falling from Jean’s hair, remnants of each and every time he’s hit the ground so far. Moths cast their own shadows as they flutter around the lamps, leaving behind shapes on Jean’s face as he works a muscle in his jaw, watching Eren’s feet until he makes a step, right foot over left—

Jean moves forward, and Eren turns on the toes of his right foot, out of the way of a strike that would’ve bruised his sternum, if he’d let it hit.

The momentum of his punch keeps Jean moving toward the outer limits of the circle, giving Eren time to create enough distance so that when Jean turns back around, he’s already poised for another slow movement around the edges of the sawdust.

The training yard is different when there’s no one else to watch. It’s quieter, more spacious. There are no lingering smells of leather or weapon polish, no heavy scent of bodies pressed to close together during the summer time, no sun to warm the dirt beneath their boots, or to reveal the dirt on Eren’s too-nice clothes.

Jean comes in close their third trip around the circle’s edge, throwing a punch with his right arm and blocking with his left. His body is curved just enough to make a strike at his stomach possible, but ineffective, and it’s the perfect posture for a close quarters boxing match. Jean’s skill has always been relegated to boxing, when it comes to unarmed combat. He’s a lot like Annie that way, and maybe it’s not that shocking. After all, it comes from having a job to do—a Crown Prince to watch over, to babysit, to keep out of trouble.

Eren has had a lot more time to make his own repertoire more eclectic.

It’s a motion that’s familiar to him, when he grabs Jean’s arm between both his hands and steals his legs out from under him, throwing him to the dirt and knocking the breath from his lungs for the fifth time. If it was the first round, Jean would roll to the side, inhaling deeply as he went, and he would bring himself to his feet in a smooth enough motion to make it questionable as to whether he’d actually been knocked down at all.

But it isn’t the first round, and Jean stays on his back, staring up at the stars above them both.

A cricket sings, somewhere. Eren lets it break disturb the quiet for him, making it easier to say, “again _._ ”

Jean is slower to rise this time, wiping his palms on his thighs, smearing dirt against them. “What’s _with_ you?”

(“ _what’s bothering you so much?_ ” Levi had asked him, his voice the texture of flower petals.

At the time, Eren had wanted to lean into it, had wanted to wrap himself up in it—but there aren’t really words for this feeling, clawing its way up his throat. Or, maybe that’s not right. There are plenty of words for this feeling, and all of them sound like a prince throwing a tantrum.

It’s not really that shocking. It’s only in his nature.)

“This is the part where you say ‘yes, Your Highness.’” Frost gathers on the backs of his teeth when he speaks, though it does nothing to soothe the sores in his mouth, left behind by everything else he’d managed to say tonight. If anything, the chill rising from his stomach is only making it worse.

“No,” Jean tells him, crossing the sawdust in slow-but-even strides. “This is the part where I say ‘what the fuck is your problem, Your Highness?’”

Even the cricket has gone quiet—or maybe it had abandoned the training yard entirely, looking for somewhere else to write its music. “Excuse me?”

There’s a line between them, like there’s always been. It’s something Jean would never cross, not for something as trivial as this, even though his boots are pressed up against its outermost edge. But just because he would never step inside Eren’s space willfully doesn’t mean he won’t throw his voice within it, dropping his words against the dirt with all the precision of a child throwing stones.

“I said, what the _fuck_ is your problem, _Your Highness?_ ” It’s a low thing, Jean’s voice. It would have to be, with the way it’s grazing the edge of insubordination. It’s different than taunts exchanged in the steady rhythm of practiced combat—it’s carrying something else inside it.

When Eren’s breath comes to him, it’s uneven. “I’m giving you the opportunity to hit me, if you could land a fucking _punch_.”

He feels dangerous, like his bones are rattling together, like if he were to touch something, it would shatter beneath his fingertips.

He isn’t sure he likes feeling that way.

“Sorry that it’s after midnight and my reflexes aren’t good enough to send you to the dirt.” Jean speaks like he’s throwing knives, and his hands are curled into fists at his sides. “But that doesn’t tell me what’s got you in such a shitty mood.”

The seams of Eren’s body are threatening to burst, stretched to breaking by the feeling swelling beneath his skin. If he focuses, if he eases the trembling in his hands, he thinks he can feel his ribs popping away from his sternum, even as his lungs shrivel beneath the balloon his heart has become.

It’s a surprise to them both when Eren moves forward, shoving at Jean’s shoulders hard enough to send him stumbling backward. The line of propriety gets smeared by the heel of Eren’s boot when he moves again to shove a second time, and it feels like there’s something building at the back of his throat, trying to press itself against his tongue, between his teeth, past the line of his lips.

Jean catches Eren’s arms for the third shove and holds them still. If his head were on his shoulders right, he would’ve pulled his hands free, would’ve found something funny and disarming to say that would make this less embarrassing for them both. But as it stands, it just becomes the moment that the nauseating thing inside his mouth bursts free, falling to the dirt with a wet slap.

(“eren,” Levi had said, and all of Eren’s blood had rushed to his brain, making the world around him fuzzy and indefinable for a heartbeat, or two, “ _you’re going to get me into trouble if you keep asking for favors like that._ ”

But then the world came back into focus, like always, and it had been as if he’d been punched in the gut.

Being outside the palace had made him foolish. Tasting the sunlight outside the walls had made him weak, had made him _stupid_ , had given him a hint of something that he hadn’t had. He should have known it would end that way, at the time. It’s no secret that those of royal blood take and take and take, because it’s what they were made for.

And Eren has been nothing but a prince all his life.)

“Don’t you ever get _tired_ of listening to everything you’re told?” Eren can feel the inky threads still clinging to the inside of his mouth, and for all he tries to swallow them they won’t stop coming no matter how hard he grinds his teeth. “Don’t you ever feel like a toy? Or a pet? Or a fucking _babysitter?_ ”

Jean’s hold is tight enough to hurt, incredulity crawling across his features like smoke across the sky. “What?”

It feels like there’s sand in his mouth. “You’re out here because I asked you to be. Doesn’t that get exhausting? Don’t you have a life of your own to look after or something?”

Eren’s arms fall to his sides when Jean lets him go, his expression replaced with something new and entirely unwelcome. It looks a lot like pity, the way it’s pulling itself across Jean’s face, and it’s making something in his stomach roll uncomfortably.

There’s a hairsbreadth of time where the only sound is the creak of Jean’s leather armor, the lamplight in the training yard playing over the colors of Eren’s Guard. And then he says, “you’re aware that the Guard didn’t, like, exist before you were born, right?”

It’s a question pulled from nowhere, and it’s enough to make storm building at the back of his throat pause. “Yeah. So?”

“Do you know _why_ anyone joins the Prince’s Guard?” It’s asked softly enough that Eren could pretend he hadn’t heard it, if he’d wanted to. It could’ve gotten lost in the shadows somewhere, swallowed by the moths still hanging around the lamps.

Eren rolls his lips over his teeth before he says, “because they’re offered the position. The way the Queen Regent talks about it, it’s like managing a company with different departments, and that’s where she put you.” The cricket starts up again on the other side of the training yard, sounding much closer to the circle of sawdust and packed sand. “It’s a distinction, or something.”

“It’s a distinction we’re _asked_ about. It’s not even really an offer. Her Majesty says, ‘do you wanna join the Prince’s Guard?’ And we can say yes or no. But generally, when someone’s asked, they say _yes_ , and do you know why?”

Eren can feel his mouth twisting as he shifts his weight between his feet. “No,” he says, and his voice is flat enough that a coin could’ve rolled across it for kilometers. “Please, elaborate. I’m dying to know.”

“I’m explaining for _your_ benefit.” Loose sawdust falls from Jean’s hair when he pushes a hand through it, fluttering about his shoulders like snow. “People join the Guard because they like _you_. I’m pretty sure that if Her Majesty asked around the kitchens, they’d _all_ sign up and then there’d be no one to make food.” Jean cocks one hip out, his armor creaking with the movement. “The horsekeeper _and_ the stablehands would drop their jobs in a heartbeat, and he _hates_ any sort of conflict. The librarians all need glasses and they’d _still_ try and take up swordsmanship.” Jean pauses, looking Eren up and down, from the toes of his boots to the mess of his hair.

The cricket keeps talking, as if it’s a member of the conversation, and Eren lets it speak. But then Jean continues, “no one does all that extra shit for you just because they feel like they have to. I’ve never gotten extra pastries from the kitchens that didn’t come from _you_.”

Eren uncurls his fingers, one by one, though the tension doesn’t leave his body. “It’s because you’re rude and don’t like to socialize with them when they want to gossip.”

“And you get the free shit because you know all of their names,” Jean replies, resting the knuckle of one finger beneath his own chin. “But what I’m _saying_ is that you should probably be a little bit easier on yourself, yeah? Keep the royal ego in check.” Jean’s eyebrows arch upward when a smile rises to his face. “Not everything is about _you_.”

“Ha-ha.” Breathing comes easier, a little, even though his words still feel stale when they sit on his tongue. “That’s not really what I wanted to hear.”

“Then maybe you should yell at someone else and get a second opinion.” Jean’s left shoulder pops when he rolls it, a wince flickering from one side of his face to the other. “I’m _beat_.”

“You were,” Eren tells him. “Five times.”

“Harsh.”

What would’ve been a laugh on a different day is just a huff from behind clenched teeth. But it feels better than nothing, and it seems to relax something in Jean’s posture, makes his shoulders sag a little more.

It’s into a pause between cricket songs that Eren says, “you’re dismissed. Get some rest or something. I’ll wait ‘til tomorrow to brag about how I mopped the floor with your face.”

“There’s a _mean_ streak in you,” Jean says, falling into step beside him when Eren starts moving toward the palace proper, entering the swathe of light afforded by the decorative iron-wrought lamps fixed to the stone columns beside the stairs. It isn’t until they’ve reached the first stair that Jean keeps talking, his voice a quiet thing when he says, “you’ve been happier, recently. It’s weird to see you all... miserable again.”

“I’m not miserable.” It’s a reflex, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that _miserable_ doesn’t feel like the right word. “It’s summer. I’m pissy. The heat makes me a gigantic baby with a ridiculous amount of power.”

Jean hums and it sounds unamused. “Do you want an escort to your room, Royal Pissbaby, sir?”

Eren snorts, covering his mouth with one hand. “ _I_ am going for a walk and _you_ are going to bed before you say something else _hilariously_ offensive.” He pauses, toeing the ground beneath his boot. And then, “goodnight Jean.”

The creak of leather and the nighttime quiet hover around Eren’s shoulders for a moment. But then Jean says, “goodnight, Your Highness,” and turns around, making his way toward the barracks with a yawn that pops his jaw.

It’s only when he hears the door to the Guard barracks fall shut that Eren makes his way up the small set of stairs, dusting sand from his shoulders that had been kicked up during the exercise in the yard, leaving it behind along with the cricket still chirping softly in the darkness.

The path he takes is a familiar one, along the stone pavilions that edge almost every wall of the main structure. He can taste a rainstorm coming, though the sky is still cloudless above him. It’s the chill, maybe, that gives it away, or it might be the distant sound of coming thunder.

Or it’s just the fact that the coming autumn smells stronger at night, heralding the end of summer, and it seems like even the rain wants to feel different when the seasons change.

It’s no surprise that Eren finds himself at the gardens, the soft perfume of the flowers dancing beneath the awnings and carried by a breeze. But while it’s not a _surprise_ , it’s not what he’d wanted. He’d hoped that his feet would take him to the library, or toward the kitchens, or _anywhere_ else, because his brain ought to be communicating with his body parts, ought to be telling them that this isn’t exactly a place that he needs to be today.

But his brain hadn’t told _any_ part of him that he ought to avoid the gardens—and it had told his heart least of all.

He pauses by one set of stairs, watching the dirt path cut its way through the gardens, splitting apart around a shrub and letting itself go in different directions. Moths are out here, too, fluttering around the artful streetlamps, peeking up over the plantlife deeper in the gardens.

It’s quiet out here. The only noise is coming from him and from the rustle of the plants as they brush against one another, the breeze pulling its fingers along their leaves.

It’s a motif, or something—him, alone in the gardens, with the promise of rain.

His own sigh gets lost in the whispers of the garden plants as he takes the stairs toward the path, keeping his strides small and slow as he begins to wander out of habit. The air is less heavy in the cover of the flowers now that the summer is on its way out, and even the stream beneath the footbridge sounds sharper as he crosses over it, his boots thudding softly against the polished wood.

(Around every gentle curve he expects to see Levi waiting, lounging against one of the stone lattices or resting against a bench, tucked away in an alcove just out of sight. It’s not hard to imagine him speaking, how easy it would be to throw his voice without the summer’s weight to muffle it.

“ _aren’t princes supposed to have a bedtime?_ ” Levi might say, even though sleep doesn’t seem to come easy to him either.

“ _i think you’re confused_ ,” Eren would reply, and he would smile, and it would feel normal and uncomplicated and right. “ _the word_ prince _means no one can give me a bedtime_.”

“ _my mistake._ ” Levi would smile back, maybe. Nighttime would soothe the smudges beneath his eyes and would make the lamplight glitter on his eyelashes. “ _i just assumed that someone has to tell a prince what to do._ ”

“ _not me_ ,” Eren would tell him, would close the distance between them and take his place beside him. “ _i tell myself what to do_.”

Levi might laugh, and it would send goosebumps racing down Eren’s arms, would open up his ribcage and free his heart, would ease the tension that just _won’t_ leave his shoulders—

Or something like that.)

“A writer,” comes from behind him, spoken softly but still audible, and Eren’s skin almost peels away from his body in his surprise. It’s a reflex that turns him on his heel, that brings his arms up in a defensive position even as his feet shift to allow himself to launch into an offensive strike at a moment’s notice. It’s borne from years of teaching, of long mornings and sore muscles, of—

As Eren sees Levi standing there, cupped within the circle of light created by one of the streetlamps, he feels his reflexes bleeding out of the soles of his feet and into the ground beneath them. Any training he’d ever had at _all_ bleeds out of him, leaving him frozen on one side of the footbridge with Levi on the other, holding Eren’s thermos between his hands.

“What?” Eren says, his arms falling to hang by his sides, useless and unmoving.

“You asked what I thought you’d be doing if you weren’t a prince,” Levi says, staying within the light’s boundaries. “I’m thinking maybe a writer. Or a teacher. Something like that.”

“I—“ everything he wants to say rises up to clog his throat, making it impossible to say anything of substance at all. “I—okay?”

The lamplight makes Levi’s eyes glow, like lightning flickering behind stormclouds. Eren can see it even from this distance. “But you’d have to be graceless, for one. And a little less yourself, for another. You’d have to let other people tell you what you can teach and what you can write, and honestly, that doesn’t seem like your style.” Levi steps out of the brightest light, taking even strides to close the distance between them.

When they’re close enough that they could reach out and touch each other, Levi holds out the thermos, the lid held by his fingertips. “You left it behind today. I was hoping you’d end up back here so I could give it back.” he says. “I cleaned it out.”

Eren tastes blood in his mouth when he takes the thermos. “Thank you.”

Levi’s lips thin and color rises to his cheeks slowly. There’s a furrow between his brows. “So what is it that I said that pissed you off so much, _Your Highness?_ ” The words roll toward Eren’s feet, but he feels them like needles digging into his skin. The pause is filled with ugly things, biting at Eren’s heels.

It’s a wheeze when Eren’s voice gets breathe enough to function. “Can you not say... that.”

The red gets brighter beneath Levi’s skin. “So was it the fact that I said your name? Or was it the ‘prince’ word that you didn’t like? What made you _so_ mad that you just up and decided—for the _both_ of us—that we just shouldn’t spend time together anymore?”

“That’s not what I—“ His throat closes, for a moment, choking him. He hadn’t wanted to have this conversation this way. He hadn’t really wanted to have it at all. “I wasn’t—mad? I wasn’t mad.”

The breath that Levi takes trembles and his eyes glitter like flint. “Okay. So I’m going to ask you again: what the _shit_ is bothering you so much?”

Eren begins to shake. Or maybe he’s been shaking the whole time—it’s a little difficult to tell. “I—why are you out here?”

“Why am I—“ Levi pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing his eyes shut hard enough to carve wrinkles at their corners. “Why am I out here. What the—“ His shoulders go up and down with a sigh that uses his whole body, taken in through the nose and exhaled through the mouth.

When Levi’s eyes open, his pupils are blown wide with... something. And then he says, “I was fucking _worried_ about you.”

If Eren hadn’t been held fast by Levi’s gaze just then, he would’ve rocked back on his heels. “What? You don’t have to _worry_ about me.”

“Are you fucking _serious_ —Eren.” He hates the way his heart slams against his lungs when Levi says his name, knocking out his breath as if he’d been thrown to the ground. “I don’t _have_ to do anything. I don’t have to work here, I don’t have to be out here with you every day, I don’t _have_ to like you, and I don’t _have_ to worry about you, but holy _shit_ I fucking want to?” A gust of wind makes the plants hiss against one another, digs its way through Eren’s clothes to rub against his skin. “You’re covered in dirt and your clothes are a fucking mess, and you don’t get to tell me how I _have_ to feel.”

There’s something scalding the back of his throat. “What?”

“Holy shit.” Levi takes another step forward, and they wouldn’t have to reach very far to touch each other anymore. “I’m _saying_ let me care about you.”

“I—“ the feeling behind his tonsils his starting to burn, starting to tear at the skin there. “You don’t—“ Another pause, and his hands are still shaking, everything he ought to say piling up like sand at the bottom of an hourglass. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to do shit just because I’m—“ _a prince_ , he wants to say, but his throat has closed itself off again.

The frown that hangs itself on the curve of Levi’s lips looks baffled, and his fingers twitch by his hip as if he’d been about to lift his hand for something. “What?” It’s an echo of the question Eren had asked, and the tone is much the same. “What?”

“You don’t have to—I don’t need you to humor me, or take me places if you don’t want to. You don’t have to... be here, or—“

“Are you not hearing me when I say that I _want_ to?” Levi’s fingers twitch a second time, and Eren holds his thermos in a white-knuckled grip. “What am I not saying _right?_ ”

“ _I_ am saying that if I wasn’t a fucking prince, you wouldn’t feel like you—“

“So _what!_ ” It’s like the crack of a whip. Even the blossoms around them flinch backward at the sound of Levi’s voice. If the palace hadn’t been asleep, it would’ve been entirely likely that someone would’ve heard him just then. “So what! You’re a prince! That has _nothing_ to do with what we’re talking about, or why I’m even _here_ with you! It has nothing to do with why I see you in the gardens, or why I like spending time with you, or why I—“

Levi’s eyelids flutter, and he stops. His eyes flicker back and forth across Eren’s face, leaving behind the hints of touches with their weight. And then he says, “so what? You’re a prince—you’re _the_ Prince, and I don’t give a shit. Should we be... this? Or... here? Probably not. But I _really_ don’t fucking care, and I _really_ don’t want to lose this thing that we’re doing because I—“ Another blink, the quick kiss of his eyelashes against the curve of his cheek. “ _Because_ I go to sleep planning on seeing you, and it gives me the sweetest fucking dreams.”

( _that’s so fucking_ cheesy _,_ Eren wants to say. He wants to fall back into their rhythm, the one that makes _sense_ , the one that isn’t yelling in the middle of the gardens. He wants what they had when they’d gone to the capital, where Levi had been colored by stained-glass windows and had looked too beautiful for words.)

Coughing doesn’t make speaking any easier. It only serves to make it easier for his words to cut his tongue. “But if I wasn’t a prince—“

The next few moments are only heartbeats long, but they stretch into forever, like starlight moves through space.

Levi’s hands are warm when he takes Eren’s face between them, though his fingertips are cold and callused. They feel a lot like Eren had thought they would, when they’d been on the balcony weeks before, when he could’ve touched Eren’s face and the only two people in the whole world who would’ve known would’ve been the two of them.

His grip is gentle and firm all at once as he tilts Eren’s head, bringing him down and standing on his toes before he presses their lips together.

It’s not much of anything at first—Levi’s lips are chapped and hard against Eren’s own, and neither of them relax into the kiss for one breath. For two.

But then Eren drops his thermos, doesn’t even hear it hit the dirt, and he wraps his arms around Levi to pull him closer.

After that, every movement is like liquid.

The knots in Eren’s muscles disappear as he goes pliant in Levi’s arms, his fingers trembling as he clutches at Levi’s shoulder. Levi’s lips relax and he draws his tongue along the seam of Eren’s lips, and Eren opens his mouth under the attention, his breath catching when their tongues meet in the middle.

It’s like a dance this way—Levi leads and Eren follows, and the kiss becomes something languid. There’s a shiver running through Levi’s body, Eren can feel it beneath his palms, and it’s enough to pull a sound from deep inside his chest, huffed softly against Levi’s lips.

Levi breaks away but doesn’t go far, and his pupils have swallowed the color of his irises, and his ears have gone pink in the time that Eren had shut his eyes.

“Coffee beans,” is breathed against Eren’s jaw as Levi nuzzles his cheek, and there’s a question forming in the fog that had layered over his brain. It seems out of place, a little bit, like something that he ought to ask about.

But Levi’s hands are gentle, and they’re firm, and they’re already guiding Eren into another kiss.

And another one.

And another.

(It is then that Eren thinks he knows what love feels like.

There are shards of glass inside his lungs somewhere, but there’s a warmth beneath his sternum that makes it feel irrelevant. His bones have gone loose, have become more like cartilage than anything else, and his knees have gone weak under his weight. When he breathes it feels like he’s inhaling stardust, or like some other cosmic building material is running through his veins, or—

“ _eren_ ,” Levi murmurs, and his blood feels hot enough to evaporate.

Love feels like this: like the birth of the universe, or something. Like being worried about. Like being cared for. Like being kissed at the end of summer, near the opening night of a new season. Like being touched with a reverence that he’s only ever read about in novels.

Love feels like the way Levi presses his face to Eren’s throat and holds him close, his fingers curled tightly in the fabric of his shirt. It feels like the way Levi shakes in the circle of his arm, the way he laughs against Eren’s pulse, the way he whispers “ _holy shit_ ” against his collarbone.  

Love feels like being _chosen_. And Eren can’t remember ever feeling that way before.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi’s lips twist before he opens his mouth to say something. But the only thing that comes out is, “Eren.”
> 
> Eren’s body falls for it, because it’s weak. “All you had to do was _say_ something. I’m a big boy and can handle rejection. _Shit,_ I mean, I was _trying_ to make space in the first place. I was just—“
> 
> “ _Eren._ ” His voice is sharper, this time. Lower, too. “That’s not what—“ A huff of breath that ghosts over Eren’s face, and a pause.
> 
> When Levi brushes his knuckles over Eren’s cheek, his hand is shaking. And then he continues, “That’s not what I meant for you to think.” This pause is longer, and Eren feels that he should say something. But Levi’s fingers uncurl to cup his cheek, and his thumb is brushing beneath his eye, and there’s nothing he can say past his heart lying flat against his tonsils. “But remember the last time this happened?” Lightning flickers inside the stormclouds of his irises before he presses further, “when you kept talking even though I needed to say something?”
> 
> The words fall out of Eren’s mouth without his permission. “Maybe I wanted to see if you would kiss me again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it took forever i'm so sorry but also wow look at how beautiful eren is
> 
> but remember folks: this story is far from over

(For most of his life, Eren had felt like he’d been layered over in stone.

It was a lot like being a beloved statue, in some ways. Polished and too-delicately kept, revered simply because he’d been there a long time, because he’d made for an interesting sort of ornamentation. It was like standing in the center of an open swathe of sprawling garden, poised in a fashion that encouraged people to stand around and whisper.

It was like being an observer in almost everything, and a participant in almost nothing.

But he’d felt different, after Levi had kissed him. It was as if his skin had been melted through by Levi’s warm palms, like the hard line of his lips had gone pliant beneath the weight of Levi’s own. Or—maybe it had felt more like the stone built around him at broken into pieces to fall beside his boots.

It had been like being baptized, or something. Like rainwater had rinsed away the cement he’d been encased in, like Levi had come into his world, seen the statue that Eren had been, and had said, “ _i think there’s a boy in there_.”

It had been like they’d made eye contact across a crowd of people, Eren’s heart racing beneath the casing around his body, and the stone around his mouth had cracked as he’d said “ _there is_.”

There are a lot of things love had felt like, during that kiss in the gardens. Eren had known then that he’d spend a good portion of his life trying to describe them all.)

Autumn is coming alive as the world around it starts to crawl from beneath the heavy heat of the summertime.

The mornings carry with them a crisper smell, as if the edges of the summer humidity have gone brittle in the shift between the seasons, and every breeze feels more like the soft caress of fingers than it does the hot breath of steam against glass. The trees lining the road toward the palace are only just starting to change color, and the crape myrtle trees are sighing softly about their own fate within the palace walls.

But other than the obvious, it’s like nothing at all has changed.

That is to say, it’s as if nothing has changed between him and Levi, and Eren isn’t sure if it’s because Levi’s busy all the time, changing the gardens over to more seasonal plant-life, or if it’s because he’s _making_ himself busy by handling all this work at once.

Whatever the case, they haven’t exchanged more than five words at a time in _eight days_ , and it’s making him _restless_. It’s making his skin itch, like there’s a sunburn somewhere beneath it, and every move he makes causes his bones rub against it, and the burn scrapes against them like sandpaper. And he can feel it in his _teeth_ when he moves too quickly, even as his lips still tingle with the memories of one kiss that had become too many to count.

Even walking out to the stables hasn’t helped any. It still feels as if there’s something vibrating in his sinuses, as if there’s electricity buzzing in his fingers, as if his knees have turned to something liquid and the only way to keep himself upright is to keep moving _somewhere_. But at least the main stable is empty, and there are more than enough walls to lean against, and that the sensation of the rising autumn can be felt even among the warmth left behind by the horses.

“Do mine own eyes deceive me, or has the Crown Prince come to the stables for the first time since _spring?_ What could _possibly_ be the occasion?” Connie rounds the corner only moments after his voice does, stone-dust and grass shavings clinging to the toes of his boots, looking for all the world like a proper palace horsemaster. His melodramatics carry farther in here with the horses roaming the pasture outside, and in the quiet hanging from the stable’s ceiling, Eren can hear the rattle of shoe-nails as they shift inside the small bag at Connie’s hip as he closes the distance between them.

It’s at the edge of the invisible line, drawn across the width of the path between the stable’s enclosures a meter in front of Eren’s feet that Connie stops and bows at the waist, the white of his smile pointed at the ground beneath them both.

There’s an echo here, of the training yard, and if he shut his eyes, he’s certain he could smell sawdust among the mix of rubber mats and horse feed.  It feels as if there’s too much of him beneath his skin, pulling it taut over the restlessness boiling beneath his ribs.

The reason for the familiarity is obvious, of course. There’s Eren, and there’s someone else, and there’s a line between them, and all he can think about is Levi, because it’s like nothing has changed at all.

When Eren speaks, it feels like there’s stone around his mouth, barely bending to accommodate the shape of his lips. “You’re being dramatic. It’s not like you haven’t _seen_ me since the spring.”  He pauses and breathes in what feels a little bit like gravel. “How’d you even know I was in here? I was looking for some _peace_.”

Connie’s still smiling when he straightens his spine, and the shoe-nails clatter together when he shifts his weight between his feet. “The stablehands went running when they saw you. Too much regal glory, or something.” He casts a glance over Eren’s shoulder, both his eyebrows arching toward the tight curls of his hair. “Where’s your entourage? Did you actually get to come out here _alone?_ ”

Eren knows without turning around that the palace walls are at his back, looming on the horizon like something intimidating, just far enough away that the carvings on them are indistinguishable. He also knows that the stables are much farther out of the Queen Regent’s comfort zone than she would find agreeable.

“No,” Eren tells him, and his sigh is deep enough to make his bones creak with the effort. “Jean’s outside.”

Connie laughs, letting it hit the wooden walls with the force of thunder. “The horses aren’t even _in here!”_

“It’s the smell, or something. One mishap with a pony, and the stables are a forbidden zone,” Eren says. In the pause he leaves within the meter’s worth of space between them, he can hear one of the stablehands shouting something, though the words are unintelligible from here. “Has it really been since the spring?”

The door to the closest stall groans softly when Connie leans against it, and the smile is still sitting on his lips. “Since you’ve been here? Yeah. Since I’ve seen you? No.” Connie’s smile grows a little wider, then, and the white of his teeth sharpens the line between his mouth and the darkness of his skin. “But what’s the occasion for the visit? Did you want to celebrate the cooler weather with a ride, or are you just here for my winning personality?”

His own laughter feels like a bubble as it leaves his mouth, a huff of breath freed from behind his teeth, and it soothes the burning at the back of his throat. “I wanted to go for a walk. Is that a crime now?”

“I can’t believe it’s been _months_ , and all it really would’ve taken to get you to visit is just saying, ‘hey, Your Highness, do you want to go for a _walk?_ ’” The freckles rise on his cheeks when his smile reaches its widest point. “Or did I need to get some actual landscaping done out here? Rumor has it that you’ve been spending most of your time in the gardens now.”

(There were moments in the gardens where Eren hadn’t felt like anyone but himself.

The air had felt closer during the summer, weighed down with humidity and the constant threat of rain carried on the edges of distant thunder. It had placed itself upon Eren’s shoulders like a blanket, had pressed down on every leaf and every blossom in the gardens.

The heat had been almost oppressive with its presence, and yet in the gardens breathing had been _easy_ , even as it felt like breathing in water, some days.

Levi would say, “ _don’t you have any other clothes to sleep in? sweatpants seem counterproductive._ ” He’d stretch his legs out in front of him, would tilt his head back to look at the sky above them, and the artificial streetlamp would cast a glow on it that carved out the line of his throat in the way an artist would in a sculpture, or something like that.

“ _yeah_ ,” Eren would reply, would turn a page in his textbook without reading anything on it, and it would be sticking to the page behind it, because the too-hot shroud of the daytime lingered long past sunset after midsummer had passed. “ _but i don’t feel like wearing anything else._ ”

Levi would laugh. The plants always tremble when that happens, as if there’s something in its timbre that gives them the urge to move. “ _you’ve got a fucking_ tailor _, and you wear sweatpants._ ”

“ _what is it with you and my sweatpants? do they offend you in some way?_ ” Eren would ask, because anything else was always too much to say. His sleepclothes felt looser, and his ribs felt like they could expand endlessly around the volume of the thing that had been growing beneath them, and leaving his circlet behind in his bedroom made his head feel less heavy—even if it didn’t make him feel any less like a Prince.

In the gardens, he was still a prince, because that had been who he always was. But he was a prince who could wear what he wanted, and laugh when he wanted, and say stupid things when he wanted.

In the gardens, he was himself when Levi looked at him, and it was like stone shattering around his body every single time.)

Heat starts to gather along Eren’s cheekbones, rising to cover his ears and crawling down the back of his neck, but when he speaks next it’s in the same tone he always uses, as if there aren’t feelings piling onto the back of his tongue in thick and slimy shapes. “It’s one of the only places I don’t need babysitting,” he says. “I think everyone feels that if someone makes it to the gardens and successfully takes me out, they’ve earned a prize.”

Connie’s nose wrinkles and his lips thin with a grimace, as if Eren’s joke had brought to mind the memory of the acrid smell of smoke as the main stable had burned when they were both much younger. “That’s never funny.”

“It’s _always_ funny.” Connie makes a sound with his tongue between his lips into the silence that threatens to rise from the stone-dust beneath their boots. “But the gardens have been off-limits this week. They’re being replanted for the fall. _And_ the kitchen staff kicked me out. I was told that I would spoil my appetite, or something. So here I am.”

“Wait,” Connie’s eyes narrow, and the freckles on his nose pull tight across the bone there. “Are you telling me I was _second fiddle?_ ”

“Technically,” Jean’s voice comes from outside, buoyed up by a breeze that carries with it the hint of dying leaves even though autumn is just beginning, “you’re third fiddle.”

Eren has to speak over Connie’s strangled noise to be heard when he says, “could you shut up please? Don’t eavesdrop, that’s rude, and also _not_ your job today.”

He can’t tell if Jean snorts or not. Whatever sound he might’ve made gets swallowed in Connie’s dramatism, made entirely of too-loud sniffled and half-laughed sobs. “I can’t believe I came after the _kitchens_. The kitchens! I mean, I know I don’t have perfumed blossoms or the best pastries in the country, but I have myself! And I’m pretty fun to hang out with!”

There’s a smile threatening to pull at Eren’s mouth and he rolls his lips against it. “I made it out here, didn’t I? And I couldn’t’ve made that walk on an empty stomach, considering how fragile and delicate I am.”

Jean’s laugh is sharp enough to clap against the outside of the stable building, almost rattling its wooden frame. Connie’s is softer, breaking apart his theatrical despair with soft snorts. “Okay, that’s fair. I forgot about your delicate sensibilities. _Please_ , Your Highness, could you ever find it in your infinite wisdom to forgive me?”

Eren lifts one hand to flick his fingers in a practiced gesture, shrugging his shoulders in the same motion. “I think I can manage. I _guess_. Probably.”

Connie presses his palm to his mouth, wheezing against the heel of his hand softly. Every breath comes almost entirely from his nose, and when his eyes squeeze shut, Eren thinks he can almost see tears forming there. He never really feels quite as funny as when he comes out to the stables. It makes the walk more worth it that he’d thought it would be, even though the sandpaper of his skin won’t stop wearing against the surface of his bones.

But then Connie’s expression smooths out, and his eyebrows furrow just enough to make his the brown of his eyes go dark with something. The autumn doesn’t feel as new when Connie looks at him like that, feels more like there’s a winter sighing against the back of his neck.

“You’re okay, though, right?”

The stone tightens over Eren’s skin, compressing the shape of his ribs over his lungs. The restlessness starts crawling up his legs from where it had been resting at the soles of his feet, humming against the roots of his teeth. It’s a question that feels like it comes out of nowhere, and it sits between them like something misshapen and poorly put together.

(He’d tried going to the gardens three days earlier.

The sky had been smoothed out by the sunrise, bringing color to sit behind the clouds as the daytime made itself more obvious above the palace skyline. By then the gardens had been cleared entirely of their summer flowers, and plants that Eren had no names for were being planted in their place.

He’d recognized Farlan, and even though his shape was almost too distant to make out properly, his hair had been cast some ridiculous golden color in the early morning. He’d seen Isabel, too, closer to the stream cutting its pathways across the empty expanse of dirt and stonework. Both of them had been deeper in the gardens—or, what had been the gardens. Almost all the hiding places had been visible, then. The space had looked so much wider without the foliage to fill it.

It had been like looking at a skeleton.

Levi himself had been closest to one of the small stairways, sorting through new flowers that Eren would have to ask about later. He’d already been forming questions when he’d said, “ _hey, levi. is this all the help you could get so early in the morning?_ ”

A different sort of sunrise had moved across Levi’s face, then. His cheeks had gone dark, and his lips had thinned to the point of being bloodless.

But it wasn’t until Levi had dropped his eyes to Eren’s boots that he’d figured out he’d made a mistake, speaking to him. It was an uncommon thing, deference like that, and Eren had only seen it one other time—when they’d met in the gardens for the first time, and Levi had bowed so stiffly that Eren had wondered if he would break in half with a posture like that.

“ _your highness_ ,” Levi had said, and Eren’s stomach had twisted. It had been as if the universe were playing games with the two of them. Eren had pushed Levi away first and he’d done it with both hands. And here Levi was, a mirror of that coldness that Eren had let weigh down his tongue. “ _sorry. manual labor is taking all my concentration. i’ll—we can talk later._ ”

It should’ve gone differently. They’d _kissed_ , and they’d kissed more than once, and it had changed Eren’s _life_.

But then there’s always time to have regrets when the afterglow wears off, and Eren supposes that he shouldn’t be surprised. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, though.)

Maybe it’s just that Eren’s wearing his nerves differently, today. Maybe they’re just easier to see.

Eren clears his throat, and when he does he thinks he can feel pieces of glass clattering against the backs of his teeth. “I’m fine. It’s just the barometric pressure shift.” His joints feel lined with potting soil when he shrugs, and the fabric of his shirt pulls taut across his shoulder blades. “It makes me restless.”

Jean speaks again, just as sharply as he had the first time, “he _always_ says that.”

“What did I say?” Eren says to the ceiling, letting it bounce around the rafters at the peak of the stable roof. “Mind your own _fucking_ business.”

There’s something pulling at Connie’s face that’s hard to label. It toys with his freckles, making them look like dust scattered along the dark surface of his skin. His mouth opens to say something, and for a moment the hairs on Eren’s arm rise. He can see another question sitting in Connie’s mouth, can almost feel the edges of it getting ready to press against his own throat, and the restlessness hitting the back of his throat hard enough to scald the back of his tongue.

“ _Connie!_ ”

And then Eren watches the question fall to pieces.

One of the stablehands makes their way down between the stalls, dirt staining the fabric of his jeans, and shavings of grass are scattered across the front of his shirt. “One of the horses ran off when we were trying to shoe it,” the stablehand says, speaking almost too quickly to keep track of. It’s then that Eren notices the hoof-shape pressed against the sternum of their T-shirt. “And it keeps running away.”

Connie’s face softens, the tension easing out of his expression and his shoulders when he sighs in the way an expert does when they’re face with a problem the could handle in their sleep.

The stablehand glances away from Connie’s face to find Eren standing there, and his skin pales to the point of looking waxen, and when they bow at the waist, it looks as if their nose is going to touch the stone-dust of the floor.

“Your _Highness_ , I’m so sorry—I’m—I didn’t see you, and—“

“We’ve got a horse to shoe,” Connie interrupts them, lifting the stablehand out of their bow by the collar of their shirt. “Sorry, Your Highness.”

It’s a relief when Eren replies, “business is business. I’ll see you later. Maybe this spring.”

Connie’s laughter is an echo left behind as he disappears out of the main stable, and then it’s just Eren and the smell of horse feed and kicked-up stone dust. It isn’t until the shouting starts up out toward the pasture that he turns around and heads back toward the palace, pulling the door shut behind him.

Jean steps away from the main building a hairsbreadth before Eren does, and they end up in the same form they’ve always taken—no one at Eren’s back, yet walking close enough to be in Jean’s periphery should anything surprise them both. It’s not shocking that it’s the same form they’ve always taken, because nothing at all has changed, except the fucking season. But even that’s the same every year.

The gravel-dirt mixture of the path toward the palace crunches beneath their boots, their rhythms just slightly off from one another. The noise buries the whisper of the breeze beneath it as it moves through the grass around them.

“You can’t keep blaming the weather for your moods, Your Highness,” Jean says. His voice clatters against the gravel like loose change, and Eren doesn’t turn around to watch it lay among the crushed rocks.

“I didn’t realize I needed your permission to explain my moods,” Eren replies. A stronger gust of wind pushes further down the path this time, and there’s the hint of almost-chilly teeth pulling at his clothes, another reminder that the seasons have officially changed places, having brushed fingers only briefly during the summer’s departure. “I’ll remember that next time.”

“That’s not what I meant.” This is the gentler tone that Jean had used in the training yard that night, wrapped in shadows like they both had been, broken only by standing lamps setup around the circle of sawdust. It leaves a sour taste in Eren’s mouth, hearing it in broad daylight, hearing it _now_. “I _meant_ that, like, it’s okay to just want to walk around, or feel restless, or whatever. When you blame it on the barometric pressure you sound old.”

Eren scoffs, and when he takes his next step he feels the sound of the gravel move through his body as if he’d chewed the stone to pieces with his own teeth. “Whoops. Can’t sound _old_. What will my multitude of close friends think?”

“That you’re old and _surly_.” The sun hangs low in the sky by now, shadows stretch down the path toward the two of them, reaching away from the palace with long fingers. The temperature drops when they step inside their boundary, and a shiver dances its way through Eren’s body before Jean speaks again. “You never _actually_ talk about what’s bothering you. ‘Look at me, I’m the Crown Prince, the heat makes me an unbearable baby with a rifuckulous amount of power.’ So what does this season make you? A huge baby turtle that doesn’t want to talk about his feelings with the power to rule a nation?”

“I don’t sound like that,” Eren says after a moment, following the edge of a shallow rut running parallel to the grass beside the service road, left behind by the trucks that bring feed to the stables. It feels as if there are flower petals crammed into his mouth, and when he speaks, it’s almost as if he can watch them flutter to the gravel path beneath their boots. “I just miss the gardens.”

For too many heartbeats, the only thing between them is the sound their footsteps. And then, “you really do spend a lot of time there.”

The palace walls are touching the sky by now, and Eren can see one of the staff doors tucked into the stonework, this one artfully placed  up a small staircase, tucked inside the circle of a setting sun. There’s a member of the palace guard beside it, and two more standing watch on the battlements above with an unimpeded view of the stretch of grass and roadway toward the stables behind them.

There’s an unasked question stretching out it’s tendrils to cling to Eren’s clothes.

“I know,” Eren says after another heartbeat more, and everything tastes like the perfume of crushed plants, as if he really had pieces of petals stuck between his teeth. He knows then that if he were to say anything else, it would give him away. His breath would smell like the gardens themselves, and his body would sing with the afterburn of the kiss he’d been given all over again, and so he doesn’t say anything else.

Jean makes a noise that noncommittal enough to dance against the edge of something punishable, and he scales the stairs with a nod toward the palace guard, pushing through the heavy wooden door without so much as a huff of exertion. Eren follows after him, sliding the lock into place when the door falls shut behind him.

Eren swallows flower petals before he breaks the silence as they make their way toward the palace proper. “You’ve got the night shift tonight, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got door duty. Which means _I_ am going to take a nap.” Jean stops at the intersection of three corridors, his boots almost silent on the running carpet, as he turns to glance over his shoulder with an arched eyebrow. “What about you? Are you going to sit around and mope until your princely bedtime?”

“Probably,” Eren replies, and lifts one of his own eyebrows in a mirror, now that the conversation is moving with a rhythm he knows by heart. “I might sit down and write in my diary and cry. Dinner, at some point.”

“Sounds like a solid evening you’ve got planned.” Jean pauses, and his jaw works around whatever it is that he wants to say. And then, “you sure you don’t need anything from me before I crash for a while?”

“If I _really_ needed emotional support,” Eren tells him as his own lips lift in a smile small enough to be forgettable, “I’d talk to a rock for the same effect. Shit, maybe _I’ll_ take a nap. All this walking wore me out, and I still haven’t gotten over just how _badly_ I kicked your ass last week.”

“You’re the one who was like ‘I’m restless, let’s walk _all_ the way out to the stables after dicking around by the barracks and then walk _all_ the way back.’” It’s almost a challenge when Jean talks that way, getting close enough to question Eren’s decisions without _actually_ questioning them at all. It’s something he’s appreciated, often enough, and this time whatever might’ve been hiding in Jean’s tone is broken apart when he bows, an indication that there’s nothing else to be said between them. “I’ll see you tonight when you inevitably end up wandering around for coffee.”

“You will,” Eren says, “when I inevitably make your job way harder by traipsing around the palace unsupervised in the middle of the night.”

Jean’s laughter is muffled against his palm as he walks away, the sharp edges that had been present outside dulled within the earshot of the palace staff, and when the sound dies away entirely Eren takes the hallway to the right, sparing glances when palace guards and members of the staff pause in their own journeys to bow when he passes.

It’s always harder to move around the palace when the sun is still up.

The closer Eren gets to the wing where the royal family sleeps, the less people there are. Palace staff are relegated mostly to back hallways and unseen paths running adjacent to the main corridors where those of higher rank move about. There are even fewer members of the palace guard, here—and the Prince’s Guard itself is nowhere to be found except in Eren’s own tower, still a measure of distance away.

He supposes that’s why it’s even possible that the soft murmur of his name gives him pause the first time he hears it.

The second time, Eren stops altogether, standing inside a circle of light made by the setting sun as its light bleeds from a window cut into the stone wall.

The third time he hears his name, Levi steps out of one of the staff hallways, and Eren knows for a fact that there’s a secret passage in there. This fact makes Eren’s heart crawl its way up his throat to sit against the back of his tongue as if it means to stop his breathing.

“I was wondering if you were going to hear me or not,” Levi tells him, crossing the width of the corridor in slow, easy strides. His workboots make no sound against the running carpet, and they huff only softly when their rubber soles hit stone. “Can you imagine having to shout your name to get your attention? I’d probably be arrested. Maybe stoned to death.”

“That’s archaic,” Eren says reflexively, falling into the push and pull of their conversation like he has more than a hundred times over, and it’s like his windpipe has been compressed to the size of a child’s straw. “You’d probably be beheaded, or something.”

He can feel his palms start to sweat when Levi steps into the light afforded them both by the window.

It’s the messiest that Eren has ever seen him. There’s fresh dirt all over his jeans—his knees, his thighs, the cuffs. The white of his T-shirt is just as filthy, layered over in fresh soil stains and grass stains and multicolored smears of what have to be the remnants of flower petals.

There’s even soil dragged in a line against Levi’s left cheek, and Eren can feel his fingers tremble with the urge to wipe it away.

He’s too beautiful for words, really. That’s something that hasn’t changed either.

“Either one of those options sounds really unfortunate,” Levi says after a moment’s pause. “You know, you’re a pretty difficult person to find, when you wanna be.”

A feeling curdles in Eren’s mouth, thick and sour, as he watches Levi’s lips move. He thinks of the way Levi’s fingers had felt against his face, the way his lips had been chapped when they’d kissed, the way his thumbs had moved in circles against the apples of Eren’s cheeks. It’s like a _craving_ almost—but it’s like a craving that makes him recoil, and something painful squirms beneath his ribs.

“Don’t you have manual labor to be doing, or something?” There’s dirt in Eren’s mouth when he speaks. He can feel it grinding between his teeth. “Or is that something you were only doing when it was me who wanted to speak with you?”

There’s a split-second where Levi’s eyebrows furrow, revealing a wrinkle between them. The corners of his mouth are pulled downward with the weight of... something, and when his eyes move over Eren’s face, he can feel their movement as if they were callused tips of Levi’s fingers.

“Oh,” is what he says before the silence can stretch on too long.

Words rise from the pit of Eren’s stomach, then, pushing up his throat with tendrils tipped in rose-thorns. “If you felt bad about kissing me, all you had to do was say so. I’m not going to make you, like, _keep_ kissing me. Or seeing me. Or... whatever.”

Levi’s lips twist before he opens his mouth to say something. But the only thing that comes out is, “Eren.”

Eren’s body falls for it, because it’s weak, but the words piling up behind his teeth don’t stop coming, and so he sees no reason to stop them. “All you had to do was _say_ something. I’m a big boy and can handle rejection. _Shit_ , I mean, I was _trying_ to make space in the first place. I was just—“

“ _Eren_.” His voice is sharper, this time. Lower, too. If it weren’t just them in this corridor, Eren’s certain that someone would have turned their head to look. “That’s not what—“ A huff of breath that ghosts over Eren’s face, and a pause.

When Levi brushes his knuckles over Eren’s cheek, his hand is shaking. And then he continues, “That’s not what I meant for you to think.” This pause is longer, and Eren feels that he should say something. But Levi’s fingers uncurl to cup his cheek, and his thumb is brushing beneath his eye, and there’s nothing he can say past his heart lying flat against his tonsils. “But remember the last time this happened?” Lightning flickers inside the stormclouds of his irises for a heartbeat before he presses further, “when you kept talking even though I needed to say something?”

The words fall out of Eren’s mouth without his permission to hit Levi’s boots with the sound of rainfall. “Maybe I wanted to see if you would kiss me again.”

Levi’s cheeks go dark with emotion, and red stretches across the bride of his nose and from cheek-to-cheek. His throat bobs when he swallows, and even that has gone pink with... whatever is happening on his face just then.

This time, Levi’s fingers begin to shake as they drop away from Eren’s face. But when he speaks next, his voice is absolutely even. “That’s what I’m trying to get to.” An inhale, softer than the whisper of two dandelions brushing together, and then, “I need you to meet me in the gardens tonight.”

Eren blinks. “But they’re under construction.”

“That’s why I was looking for you.” Lightning flickers a second time, and a smile plays with the line of Levi’s lips. “They’re done, and I want you to see them.”

Eren’s skin prickles with warmth when Levi looks at him like that. And then he says, “okay.”

Levi’s shoulders droop, a little, and a stiffness that Eren hadn’t even known was there seems to hit the floor around him with an almost inaudible _thud_. The smile that had been sitting on his mouth stretches wider, revealing the hint of teeth.

“Okay,” Levi replies, and he sounds just this side of breathless. “I need to shower.”

It’s like whiplash, the soreness in Eren’s chest, as if a space there had been filled and emptied and filled again far too quickly. Too many thoughts had been rolling around in his brain over the past week, and the opportunity to seek clarification had escaped him.

He’d been expecting _something_ to change in the way that _he_ felt changed—and here it is.

When Eren speaks, he feels lighter than he has in _days_. “Okay.” He glances to either side down the corridor more than once. It’s only when he’s sure it’s still empty that he bends his shoulders, ruining his practiced posture to steal a kiss with closed lips.

It’s warm, and Levi’s lips are still chapped, and he smells like soil and grass and a mixture of floral scents that Eren can’t even begin to guess the names for.

“I have to shower,” Levi tells him a second time, tracing the words against Eren’s lips with his own. His breath his coming in gasps, or maybe that’s Eren, and this feels like the riskiest thing he’s done in his entire life—even including his personal tour of the university, and the pit-stop they’d taken for food inside the capital.

“Then go shower,” Eren says, instead of stepping away, instead of saying anything else, instead of heading toward his own bedchambers to scream into a pillow to alleviate the pressure threatening to make him burst at the seams.

“I’m going.” Levi’s voice is a whisper and he pushes himself up on his toes, brushing their noses together. “Right now.”

There’s another kiss, after the first one. And another one after that. And when Levi finally disappears back into the staff corridor, Eren’s lips are tingling all over again, and he can feel the gardens hanging around his shoulders.

Eren takes a breath and something shifts inside him, like a stone sliding into place.

Something has definitely changed, now. And the taste of love is sitting heavy on his tongue.

-

(Sunrise had found Levi already taking apart the gardens, the morning after he’d laid his hands on the Prince in a way he’d never thought he would. The sky had been going grey-purple, and the gardens had been misty with the beginning of autumn as it dragged its presence against the flowers, leaving dewdrops upon every petal that it touched.

His hands had been shaking with what he’d done, and the taste of coffee beans had been washed out by something bitter, and Levi had wondered then if that was what regret was meant to taste like. It had been a little bit funny, maybe—he’d never tasted regret like that before.

But then the sun had risen further, had cast everything in gold, had played with the dewdrops with loving fingers, and Levi’s hands had stopped trembling. When he’d breathed in, he’d tasted plantlife, crisp with the beginning of autumn. He’d inhaled again and tasted the hint of coffee beans.

He’d thought of what Eren had said only hours before, tucked within the safety of the gardens, the stream babbling softly around them both.

“ _if i wasn’t a prince_.” Eren had spoken it in the way he’d asked ‘ _do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you didn’t work here?_ ’ His lips had bent around the words as if it had hurt to say them, as if their pointed edges had dragged their way along his tongue and drew blood. It was a lot like watching him shout, pushing out with both his hands so that Levi couldn’t touch him.

 _if you weren’t a prince_ , Levi had wanted to say, _i never would have met you_. Or maybe he’d wanted to say _i can’t imagine my life without you, anymore. how fucking stupid is that?_ Or perhaps he could have said, _i love you_.

But Eren’s eyes had been depthless in the star-broken darkness of the night before, and he’d sounded like there ought to be blood staining the line of his mouth, and the only thing Levi had felt able to do was kiss him.

So that had been what he’d done.

And, on his knees and covered in dirt, Levi could _feel_ how any regret that might’ve sprouted inside his chest was crushed beneath a greater weight.

It had been funny, a little. He never would have expected love to taste so strongly of coffee beans before then.

But Eren had never stopped being full of surprises.)

The Prince is always beautiful.

The Prince is always beautiful, but there’s something about seeing him in clothes entirely unsuited to his rank that pull the air from Levi’s lungs as if he’d been shoved from an airlock in the depths of space and left to freeze, somewhere among the stars. Maybe it’s the way that they ease the line of his shoulders, or the way that they soften the shape of his frame.

Or maybe it’s the fact that Levi is probably the only person who gets to see him this way, decorated like a university student woken before his alarm could go off.

Even the lamplight, cast from sconces at one of the gardens’ entrances, hesitates to touch the Prince’s skin when he’s dressed like this, his hair tousled as if he’d rolled out of bed like that, his circlet left behind in his bedchambers, somewhere. When it lays upon his skin like this, it’s delicate, as if it isn’t really pulling itself along the planes of his face at all. It drapes itself like a shroud over his body, rather than caressing its shape like it usually does.

The only thing the light seems unafraid to admire is the sunburst tattoo, centered on Eren’s forehead between his brows.

“I didn’t know you had a pullover from school, too. What, did your professor buy you a matching set?” Levi’s voice carries the short distance up the small set of stone stairs to flutter about Eren’s shoulders like a moth might.

“Um, it’s getting chilly at night now? You get onto me for being _underdressed_ , and now I’m too _overdressed_ for you?” Eren’s sneakers make no sound when he enters the gardens, taking each stair one at a time. “You’re so picky. _And_ you’re wearing a sweater, so I think this is pretty uncalled for.”

When he gets to the bottom, he places something wrapped in a cloth napkin into one of Levi’s hands, letting their fingers brush together in a way that he wouldn’t’ve allowed before. There’s a reflex to recoil pulling the muscles in his arm tight, but he lets his hands stay in place.

Whatever pastry Eren had decided to bring him is still warm against his palm.

“You’re still underdressed. I was just making an observation.” Levi tells him, lifting his free hand to tug at the string attached to the hood of Eren’s sweatshirt. The movement feels stiff, as if there are weights chained to his wrist. But there’s a smile flirting with the curve of Eren’s lips as his eyes flicker nervously over Levi’s face, and so when he drops his hand away from Eren’s pullover, he takes his hand with _intent_.

He knows that there’s a tremor in his fingers. He can feel one in Eren’s own when their fingers lace together.

“What was it that you said when I shared my _amazing_ secret passageways with you?” Eren speaks low enough that the gardens around them strain to listen. “‘ _Impress_ me.’”

Levi remembers the cadence of Eren’s voice well enough to reply, “oh, I think you’ll be pretty well impressed,” almost perfectly.

Eren’s laughter is louder than his voice had been in the almost-brittle chill of nighttime, rustling the leaves of the closest fern and swallowing the muffled whisper of the stream hidden behind the new foliage. But even in its enthusiasm, the sound doesn’t carry outside the boundary of the gardens, held close by the newer blossoms that haven’t gotten to meet the Prince yet, but still seem to love him anyway.

Levi feels like he can relate to that.

There’s a choir of crickets singing softly from where they’re tucked somewhere among the familiar pathways lined in unfamiliar growth. It’s impossible to place just where, exactly, the sound is coming from as the two of them make their way deeper into the gardens, leaving the palace proper behind. No matter what path they take, the noise doesn’t get any louder, nor does it get any more distant. It’s as if the gardens had been built back up around it, as if it had decided on its own ambience before Levi had even started putting them back together.

(Levi had remade the gardens countless times before.

The first time he’d looked at them, they’d been peppered with weeds, and none of the plants had been pruned properly. Petals had been scattered beneath the flowers they’d come from, carpeting the empty spaces on the overgrown grasses beside the lopsided edges of the packed-dirt path. At the time, he’d felt a lot like the gardens had looked. They’d become a project, and every season had allowed him a new canvas, or something poetic like that.

But this time had been different.

He’d looked out at the freshly churned earth, and the empty space had seemed almost endless from where he’d been standing in the center. The palace had only been visible at the edges of his vision, its towers rising up through the evening fog like the tops of mountains. It had been beautiful in a haunting sort of way, and autumn had made the silence curling around his ankles into something gentle, as if drying leaves were about to rustle their way across a stone floor.

And yet, for all that the space had been exactly the same as it always was, for all that the gardens had been ready to be remade into something different and new and incredible, Levi hadn’t known what he’d wanted to say.

It was a first, for him.

“ _what’s the hold up?_ ” The quiet was chased away by Farlan, the sound of his workboots scraping along the garden paths, undisturbed by their recent meddling. “ _what happened to ‘we need to get this done in half the time, farlan,’ and ‘the crown prince’s nanny could do a better job at pulling up harebells than you’?_ ”

“ _i’m thinking_ ,” Levi had replied. A breeze pushed its way through the barren skeleton of the gardens, finding no flowers to brush its fingers against. “ _i don’t know what to put here._ ”

“ _‘it needs to be done this week,’ you said. ‘i’m tired of it taking two fucking weeks to put together gardens every three and a half months,’ you said._ ” Farlan had shifted his weight between his feet, tucking his hands in his pockets. Dried soil flaked from his shoulders as he’d rolled them, watching the line of the palace roof as the sun had begun to drop behind it. “ _just go to the nursery in the city and figure it out when you get there. spontaneity is always fun._ ”

He’d been thinking of Eren, then—but that was nothing new. The gardens had loved the Prince in the summertime, leaning in to listen when he spoke, the leaves holding onto his words like they cling to raindrops, savoring the way they’d felt against their stems. The gardens had been sculpted in such a way that the sunlight had been able to press kisses to Eren’s cheekbones, to his jawline, to the sunburst inked upon his forehead.

He hadn’t been sure how to recreate that in autumn.)

The packed dirt of the path they’d taken stops short against a sheet of silver creeper vine, clinging to the stone lattice behind it. Its leaves have gone bright red to usher in the new season, the pale veins splitting apart each leaf into different sections. They catch the light of the closest streetlamp, throwing it across the front of Levi’s shirt like cut gemstones.

It’s an innocuous ending to a pathway that had gone much farther, the creeper vine crawling its way along the hedges beside the lattice until it fades out into the softer pink of the Bright Eyes phlox, curving gently around the edge of another path, twisting in another direction through the gardens themselves.

Levi can feel his palm sweating against Eren’s as he looks at the lattice covered in the creeper vine, and there’s a trembling in his knees that he can feel in the roots of his teeth, churning the contents of his stomach.

“This definitely is a dead end,” Eren says. The humor in his tone is something delicate, and he’s squeezing Levi’s fingers in a grip that turns his knuckles white. “What’re the leaves on it? They don’t look anything like ivy.”

“It’s silver creeper vine,” Levi tells him. It’s like any number of conversations that they’ve had here, safe and surface-level. “And you’re supposed to _pull_ the lattice outward. It’s not actually a dead end.”

Levi’s fingers are stiff when he lets go of Eren’s hand to step forward, curling his fingers around the stonework, careful not to crush the creeper vine beneath his palm when he does. The hinges on the on the edge of the latticework creak when he opens it wide, the leaves of the creeper vine whispering against the dirt beneath the new doorway.

Eren’s eyebrows arch high onto his forehead, the sunburst tattooed between them rising in tandem as he glances over Levi’s face, a question hanging between them.

“You first, Your Highness,” Levi holds Eren’s eyes when he speaks, watching something that looks a lot like nervousness move across the Prince’s face like soap bubbles over water. “ _You’re_ the one I’m supposed to be impressing. I’ve seen this shit already.”

The anxiety drops from Eren’s features when he rolls his eyes, though the first step he takes is stiff with hesitation. The second step is just as stilted, as if every piece of his regal grace had been left behind at the gardens’ entrance, bathing in the dimness of the wall sconces by the stairs.

But the third step Eren takes leads to a fourth, and the rigidity bleeds out of his bones and onto the ground beneath his sneakers. It’s only when Levi pulls the lattice closed behind them that Eren takes a breath to speak, and it’s deep enough to change the air pressure in the hidden alcove.

Eren’s voice is just below a whisper when he says, “holy _shit_.”

All the light in the alcove is provided by wrought iron lamps affixed to the polished wood columns of a gazebo in its center. More latticework curls around the alcove’s edges, decorated in a curtain of flame flower that droops to the trimmed grass growing beneath it. Lemon queen sunflowers decorate the gazebo’s base, staggered between helenium blossoms that manage to burn their bright orange color even in the dim lamplight.

Eren turns in slow circles in front of the gazebo’s stairs, and his eyes manage to catch fire like they always do. They look like more than gemstones just then. They look like _meteorites_ , glowing green above the curve of his cheekbones.

When they settle back on Levi, he can feel their presence on his shoulders like a physical weight.

“This is _beautiful_.” Eren sounds so _breathless_ , and there’s something about the way his pupils threaten to swallow the color of his irises that sends Levi’s pulse racing, that kickstarts his heart so viciously that it does nothing but churn against mud, gaining no traction as it hums inside his chest.

This particular feeling isn’t new for him anymore. But it feels more important now.

 _i was thinking of you_ , Levi wants to tell him, _when i put this place together_. But what he says instead is, “I put more perennial sunflowers in here. A different kind. I figured if this place was going to be yours, I might as well add the flowers that make me think of you the most.”

Eren scoffs, a soft thing, and turns away to scale the small set of stairs into the gazebo. His sneakers against the wood floor are loud in the closeness of the alcove, even as the plants around them muffle the edges of the sharp sound. From where Levi’s standing, he thinks he can see the outermost skin of Eren’s ears go darker with color.

There’s a hairsbreadth’s worth of pause between them, filled by the whining of Levi’s heart as it treads mud beneath his ribs. And then Eren says, “I make you think of sunflowers?”

 _you make me think of the sun_ , Levi wants to say. _i'_ _m the sunflower in this metaphor._ But it’s easier to say, “yeah. You do.” Even then, it’s not entirely a lie.

Eren turns back around, and the sunburst of his tattoo glitters in the shadows cast over his face by the gazebo’s roof. The deep purple of his pullover looks almost black where the darkness touches it, and a fresh breeze carrying the dulled chill of early autumn toys with the hood’s string as it brushes over Eren’s collarbone.

There aren’t a lot of words to describe the way the Prince looks at any given time. More often than not, Levi finds himself settling on _beautiful_. But sometimes, ‘beautiful’ isn’t enough.

This time is one of those.

“Why?” Eren asks. His voice sounds like a drizzle, misting against the window of a silent room.

Levi can feel sand in the joints of his shoulders grinding against his bones when he shrugs. He sets his still-untouched pastry on the gazebo’s railing as he scales the steps himself, his own shoes almost silent against the polished surface of the wood floor. The breeze makes its way through the gazebo a second time, rustling the heads of the flowers clinging to the latticework hiding them from the rest of the gardens.

Moths flutter by the lamps on the wooden columns, and the shadows made by their wings flicker against Eren’s throat.

And then Levi says, “because you’re like the sun. Obviously.”

The honey-almond of Eren’s skin goes far darker underneath the lamplight, starting in the hollows of his cheeks. “Right.”

Something twitches beneath Levi’s sternum. It’s surprising, maybe. Levi knows that this is something that the royal family is raised to believe. It starts early, with the bestowing of the sunburst at the age of twelve, and carries into adulthood. Levi has watched Eren walk as if the sun bled from his own pores, has watched the sunflowers in the field outside the palace bow their heavy heads toward the Prince as if they’d mistaken him for the sun itself without any second guesses.

Levi supposes that he hadn’t known this. Or—perhaps he had. It had been hidden against the sharper edges of Eren’s laughter, in the sadder glimpses of his smiles.

When Levi speaks next, he thinks he can taste the dirt that had been in the air when he’d built the alcove around the gazebo. “I’m serious.” He tugs on the sleeve of Eren’s pullover, bringing him close enough to the railing adjacent to the stairs before leaning over it to point toward one of the newest sunflowers. “They’re called lemon queens,” Levi tells him. “They’re more ‘classic sunflower’ than the wooly species you’d seen in the summer.” He moves his index finger slightly to the right. “And that is a helenium. It’s an asterid—like the cosmos and other daisies. It’s named after stars.”

Eren smells like the memory of summer, as close as he is. He smells like summertime and vanilla and _fucking_ coffee beans, and Levi can feel his shoulders start to tremble, can see the reflex starting in his hands.

But he continues speaking anyway. “I put the sunflowers and the helenium beside one another, because they made me think of the universe.” It doesn’t feel right when Levi says it, and so he swallows and tries again. “They made me think of _you_. Of bringing the universe to you.” He pulls his arm back to his body, resting both his forearms against the railing, leaning his weight against it. “There’s another flower that I’m saving for the spring.”

Eren’s voice is tight when he says, “oh yeah?” It sounds like something delicate, or like something brittle. Or... not entirely. It sounds like stone that’s about to break. But he leans his own shoulder against Levi’s as if there’s nothing in his tone that’s giving him away, and his body is warm beneath the fabric of his pullover—warm enough that Levi can feel it even through his own sweater. This is something new for them. “What flower?”

“The poet’s shooting star.” Levi lets his words rest upon the flower petals beneath the wooden railing, speaking softly enough that they don’t weigh down the blossoms enough to snap their stems. “It’s not an asterid, but it makes me think of you anyway.” A pause sits between one thought and the next. And then, “you’ll see.”

“Aw.” Eren sounds almost normal when he talks like that, and a small smile pulls at the curve of his mouth. “I didn’t know you were planning my birthday that far in advance.”

Levi can’t help that he laughs, can’t help the fact that he can taste something sweet on his tongue. “Stop accusing me of getting you stupid shit for your birthday, like putting you on sunflower duty or showing you a _plant_. What kind of man do you think I am?”

There’s no hesitation when Eren says, “a good one. The best one.” Levi’s skin goes warm from the crown of his head to the palms of his hands, and he can feel goosebumps rise along the ridge of his spine. He opens his mouth to say something, but Eren continues before the words can even rise to his tongue. “Were you avoiding me this week?”

 It feels like he’s been punched when Eren looks at him that way.

(Levi had spent a great many moments of the past summer wondering just how, exactly, he’d gotten into any number of the situations he’d been in with the Prince. He’d wondered about how all these things had managed to happen to him: the sunflower field, and the gardens, and the training yard, and the secret passageways, and Eren’s bedchambers.

Each one had seemed like a cosmic joke, at the time—the Prince had always been criminally breathtaking, and every time they’d met, _every time_ Eren had decided to include Levi in snapshots of his daily life, he’d been pulled further into... something. Into this. Into love, maybe, but he hadn’t known it then. All he’d known was that the universe was laughing at him, and Levi hadn’t been able to see any humor in it.

 _how did i end up here?_ Levi would ask himself—inside his own bedroom, within the myriad scents of the gardens, out beside the training yard where everything had smelled of sawdust and sunshine even in the shadows of the stone awning.

Levi remembers all of them, remembers each choice he’d made when Eren had looked at him, when he’d smiled, and when Levi had known he was doomed.

He doesn’t have to wonder how he’d ended up here, anymore.

He’s here because he chose to be.)

“Yeah.” Levi speaks to the lemon queens and the helenium, watching the flowers sway together as another autumn breeze twists around their stems. “I was. For a little while. I wasn’t—“ His throat feels tight, as if the only thing his lungs can do is wheeze. “I’d kissed you.”

Eren shifts beside him, and when he rests his own forearms against the railing, only the tips of his fingers can be seen from the edges of his pullover’s sleeves. There are centimeters between their shoulders now, and Levi feels the chill bite through his sweater.

“Yeah,” Eren says. “You did.” He takes a breath in the pause he leaves behind, and then he continues, “If you didn’t want to—if you don’t—“ Another pause, another breath, and then, “you just have to say so.”

(“ _i don’t want you to feel like you have to do shit just because i’m—_ “ _a Prince_ had gone unsaid, but it had hit Levi across the face with all the force of a rock as if it had been spoken aloud.)

“That’s not what I meant by... avoiding you.” Levi can still hear the crickets somewhere in the gardens, chirping softly. “I talked all that good shit, the night I’d—that night. But at the end of the day, you’re still a _prince_. You’re _the_ fucking Prince, and I didn’t want to—“ His words scatter like pebbles against the ground beneath the gazebo, rolling out onto the grass to catch the lamplight and throw it wide. “I didn’t want to ruin what we had by... kissing you.”

It’s quiet, for a moment. For two. Levi can’t even feel his heart beating, anymore. And then Eren says, “oh,” soft enough for the sound to almost get lost in the stillness of the gardens.

Levi pushes forward anyway, then. Without this momentum, Eren will leave, and this conversation won’t happen—even though it _needs_ to. Even though Levi has been waiting for it for eight days. “But then I thought that—I figured that since it had already happened, since we’d already—I started avoiding you because I needed time to... put this shit together.”

They’ve grown farther apart now. Eren’s watching the flame flower as it murmurs with another another autumn sigh, looking away from Levi entirely. “It’s nice, this place. It’s really pretty.”

He watches Eren blink, watches his too-long eyelashes kiss his cheeks when he does. “You’re not getting it. _This_ place in the gardens is... yours. I needed to—“ Levi’s fingers knot together and his knuckles go white against one another. “I needed this place to be perfect. I needed the _gardens_ to be perfect, because—“

Eren’s gaze flickers away from the sheet of red flowers mixed among the green leaves, and his eyes settle back on Levi’s face. There’s something happening inside them, and whatever it is makes Levi’s skin prickle, makes his toes want to curl.

“There are ways to say things with flowers,” Levi keeps going, his words tumbling over each other. “People have been doing it almost as long as they’ve been around. There are ways to tell people to ‘fuck off’ and to ‘eat shit’ probably, but there are even more—there are a lot of ways to say ‘I love you.’”

When he says that, Levi feels his own breath catch, feel bile rise hard up his throat.

Eren blinks slowly, and his eyes are glittering with—they’re glittering. _Fuck_ , he’s so beautiful, he’s ethereal, and there’s a _painful_ thing happening on his face, and Levi thinks he might throw up. And so he keeps speaking instead.

“But I had to figure out how to say it to _you_.” It feels _lame_ when it comes out of his mouth. This should be more _meaningful_ , more poetic, or _something_. “Anyone can say it, but I wanted it to be... yours. From me.”

Eren’s mouth opens. And then it shuts again. And then, “say that... again?”

A floodgate opens, then, and words spill from behind Levi’s teeth. “I—love you. I’m _in_ love with—I love you. We went to the capital, and you looked... _perfect_. You looked perfect, and you’d—I couldn’t stop thinking about the way you smile, and the way you looked at me when I watched you in the training yard, and I—after that, I couldn’t _stop_ thinking about you. I said that thinking of seeing you gives me the sweetest dreams,  and I was _serious_ , and I—“ His heart stalls in his chest, revving against mud. And then he says, “I’m so fucking in love with you, Eren, and it’s embarrassing, and I should know better than this.”

And then the match hits kerosene.

Eren moves forward with a sound that’s just as breathless as Levi _feels_ , and he’s swept up into Eren’s arms as their mouths come together in a kiss that _burns_. His legs go around Eren’s waist in a display that’s absolutely fucking _shameless_ , and he’s going to be angry at himself tomorrow, but just then there’s something buzzing in his fingertips, against his bones, in his _sinuses_.

There’s something he should say here, pressed up against the gazebo’s railing, but his fingers are in Eren’s hair, and Eren’s lips are pressed against the line of his jaw, and—

Then Eren says, “I was scared.”

Levi’s fingers tighten in his hair, and Eren’s face is warm against the skin of Levi’s throat as he hides there. “Of what?” It feels like his question should come out on a cloud of white with how warm he feels.

“That you were mad.” Eren’s voice is shaking, Levi thinks. He can feel it shudder against his pulse. “I’d just gotten over trying to push you away, and then I thought that I had, and I’ve never—I’ve never _felt_ this way before, and there’s no one on earth like you, and I don’t know what to _do_.” Levi can feel Eren’s fingers fist in the fabric of his sweater, can feel the flutter of his eyelashes on the skin of his throat. “I don’t feel like anyone else but myself when I’m with you, and it’s... terrifying.”

 _me too_ , Levi could say. _i_ _feel like myself when i’m with you. i’ve never liked being myself before._ But instead he doesn’t say anything, pushing his fingers through Eren’s hair instead.

The silence settles so abruptly that Levi wonders if Eren’s done speaking entirely. He takes a breath to ask—to see if this is the right idea, anyway, to see if this is something that is _wise_ , maybe, even though Levi already knows that it isn’t. Just like he already knows that he doesn’t really care that much.

But then Eren says something else, barely louder than a breeze through an empty corridor: “I’m in love with you.”

It feels like there are butterflies loose in Levi’s chest.

“Say that again.” He doesn’t sound like himself in that moment. It’s like he’s speaking into a dented can from far away.

When Eren speaks again, it’s louder. “I’m in love with you.” A pause, and then, “I love you.”

Levi lets go of Eren’s hair as he lifts his head from where he’d hidden it against his throat. He looks even more like he’d rolled out of bed with his hair looking like that, with his pullover rumpled like it is. His eyes move back and forth over Levi’s face, and he lifts one hand to trace over the curve of Levi’s cheek with callused fingers. It makes Levi’s skin feel too tight for his body, or like he’s about to vibrate through the wooden railing behind him.

He unwinds his legs from Eren’s waist and raises his own hand, tracing the shape of the sunburst inked against the Prince’s forehead with the pad of his thumb. It tingles, a little, when he touches it, a constant reminder of Eren’s royal blood. It was as much a part of him as anything else—the length of his eyelashes, the shape of his lips, the green of his eyes.

A prince is a prince is a prince—and Levi had found himself in love with one.

“I love you, Levi,” Eren says again, and the painful thing that had been swimming around his pupils is gone now. It’s been replaced by something more ferocious, by something sharper and more intense. Levi can feel the way his words vibrate against his thumb. “I’m not sorry that you kissed me.”

It’s nothing less than the truth when Levi replies, “neither am I.” His thumb edges against the sunburst a second time, and then, “but what do we do about it?”

Eren smiles.

Eren smiles and one of his cheeks dimple and his teeth are bright against the honey-almond of his skin. His eyes are _depthless_ , almost impossible to describe, and another breeze tousles his hair further with the fondness a parent might afford a child. He’s _gorgeous_ , fucking _heartbreakingly_ divine, and he really does look for all the _universe_ like the sun lives within his bones, like there are an endless number of stars contained beneath his skin.

And then he says, “we figure it out.”

It’s like there’s something laid out before them, stretching toward the horizon. There’s a promise there, even though it’s broad and nonspecific, even though it doesn’t really _mean_ anything at all yet. It’s hopeful in a way that Levi hasn’t felt in... years. Ages. _Ever_ , maybe.

And so he pulls Eren into another kiss, softer this time around. There are no flames licking at the edge of his vision, but there’s something cosmic blossoming beneath his ribcage where his heart had once been whining against mud.

For a moment, beneath the shadowed cover of the gazebo and among the fresh autumn flowers hiding them from the palace, Levi can forget that anything ever came before this kiss. He can forget that there’d been a time when he hadn’t worked here, when he hadn’t felt the soil beneath his fingertips and under his nails. He can forget that there was anything before the Crown Prince—before Eren.

He lets it happen as he parts his lips beneath the feeling of Eren’s tongue.

(“ _so this is ours now,_ ” Eren will say later, curled around Levi’s body as they sit on a bench made of the same wood as the gazebo around it. It will be late enough at night that even the crickets have gone quiet, but Levi can’t seem to bring himself to go back to the staff dormitories. “ _this place, i mean_.”

“ _it’s yours, yeah_ ,” Levi will tell him, breathing in vanilla and sunshine and coffee beans.

“ _ours_ ,” Eren will reply, and he will sound exactly like the Prince that he is—authoritative and brilliant, and it will be impossible to argue with him.

“ _i like the way you say it_ ,” Levi will end up admitting, will smile to himself in a way that hurts his cheeks. He’ll want to tell someone and he’ll want to tell no one all at once. One will be infinitely easier than the other. “ _ours_.”

Eren will hum softly, will nose gently at Levi’s hair. And then he will say, “ _i like the way you say it_.” A pause, and then, “ _i love you_.”

His heart will hurt from how full it is, and his eyes will water, and he will feel tears cling to his eyelashes when he blinks. And Levi will reply, “ _i love_ you _._ ”

Levi will mean that more than he’s meant anything in his life.

And the flowers will keep their secrets close, like they’ve always done.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Eren’s breathing had been almost swallowed by the rain on the gazebo’s roof, two nights after the autumn gardens had been finished. He’d dozed off sometime before, his head resting on Levi’s lap despite the grass stains smeared along the fabric of his jeans. Sleep had softened everything about him, from the line of his shoulders to the curve of his cheek, and all of him had been haloed in lamplight from the fixture in the center of the gazebo’s ceiling.
> 
> Looking at him had made Levi’s skin feel too tight for his body, as if this was something that was too personal, too _private_ for him to be seeing. Looking at him made the air feel thin and unbreathable, like he’d been placed at the top of a mountain, its peak just brushing the outermost region of the sky.
> 
> Being with Eren feels like a lot of things, and Levi hadn’t known that he would be free enough to experience any of them.
> 
> So maybe it’s more like this—it’s as if Levi hadn’t known he was _starving._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry this took so long, this semester has been so busy and my country just elected a bigoted muppet into the highest governmental office

(Eren’s breathing had been almost swallowed by the rain on the gazebo’s roof, two nights after the autumn gardens had been finished. He’d dozed off sometime before, his head resting on Levi’s lap despite the grass stains smeared along the fabric of his jeans. Sleep had softened everything about him, from the line of his shoulders to the curve of his cheek, and all of him had been haloed in lamplight from the fixture in the center of the gazebo’s ceiling.

Looking at him had made Levi’s skin feel too tight for his body, as if this was something that was too personal, too _private_ for him to be seeing. Looking at him made the air feel thin and unbreathable, like he’d been placed at the top of a mountain, its peak just brushing the outermost region of the sky.

Being with Eren feels like a lot of things, and Levi hadn’t known that he would be free enough to experience any of them.

So maybe it’s more like this—it’s as if Levi hadn’t known he was _starving_.

Eren had shifted beneath Levi’s fingers as they worked their way through his hair. The nervous tremor in his hands had stopped more than an hour before, when their conversation had faded into the Prince’s even sighs of sleep. The motion had sometime since become an absent gesture, outliving even the songs of the crickets in the gardens.

His heart had still felt like it was wound too tightly—his body had yet to learn just what, exactly, it was suddenly allowed to do.

When Eren next moved it had been with a start and a sharp inhale, his head rising to jostle Levi’s fingers, his eyes wide with surprise. There had been an imprint of the seam of Levi’s jeans pressed against the curve of his cheekbone, and his pupils had been blown open with disturbed sleep, his eyelashes throwing the light around them like stars.

Levi could feel his bones ache with the urge to hold Eren’s face between his hands. It had taken a moment for him to realize that there was nothing stopping him from doing so.

“ _i can’t believe i fucking fell asleep_.” Eren’s voice had rasped across the gazebo’s floorboards, the whisper of sand against polished stone. Levi could feel the movement of his jaw through his own palms as Eren tilted his head to press against his fingers. “ _i should’ve known i’d be a shit date. i just don’t have the worldly experience for it_.” There had been the hint of laughter, there, and it had brought to mind the taste of cinnamon against the back of Levi’s tongue, had made goosebumps rise upon the column of his throat.

“ _shut up,_ ” Levi had told him, had spoken barely softer than the sigh of the rain slowing down against the flame flower clinging to the latticed walls of the alcove. “ _it’s not a state dinner. i don’t need entertaining the whole time._ ”

“ _my mistake_ ,” Eren had replied, had angled his body closer so that their noses were a hairsbreadth from touching. “ _i just assumed being bored to death_ wasn’t _the goal of a date. truly i just don’t understand the ways of the proletariat world, and i was far more interesting when i was falling in love with you_.”

Levi had felt his heart stop. Had felt it restart again. Had taken a breath.

“ _you’re talking out your ass,_ ” Levi had said, already beginning to close the barely-there distance between them for one of the countless kisses they had shared in the time between now and two nights before.

“ _are you going to kiss me to shut me up?_ ” Eren’s lips had been chapped and almost-cold with the taste of autumn. Levi had felt them trace their way across his own.

He’d wondered, then—as Eren tilted his head just-so, as he’d parted his lips in a way that made Levi’s gut twist—if he would ever get tired of _feasting_ like this, of taking so much that his body could forget that it had ever been left _wanting_ for something. He’d wondered if this would ever get old, the way Eren’s hands wandered as if they were too nervous to stay still, of the way his callused fingers felt against the chilled skin of Levi’s cheeks.

But the curiosity hadn’t lasted long, had lived only within the space of one kiss and the next, had stretched only as long as it had taken for Eren to laugh against his mouth, for him to say, “ _i fucking love you_.”

He’d known, of course, that it was impossible to tire of this. He hadn’t needed to wonder at all.)

The capital has always made an impressive shape against the horizon, especially when Levi sees it from the review mirrors. It swallows almost everything else entirely, leaving just the image of it rising from nothing along the road behind them. Only patches of the cloud-covered sky are visible, peeking between the buildings that crowd against one another, catching watered-down sunlight on endless rows of windows, visible even through the dust kicked up by the truck’s tires pushing against the asphalt beneath them.

Autumn presses itself against the seats as it pushes its way through the open windows, running chilled fingers through Levi’s hair, and leaving Farlan’s in a state of absolute disarray. It doesn’t seem to faze him much, his elbow resting against the door at his side, his knuckles tucked against his mouth as he watches the scenery move by, the capital slowly shrinking in size at their backs.

Levi can feel it when Farlan glances over at him, his gaze needling at the side of his face when it strays away from the sporadic suburbs as they bleed into open fields along the highway.

“Is there something you wanna say, or ask me?” Levi speaks just loud enough to be heard over the wind rushing into the cab of the truck. “You’ve been squinting at me since we dropped off the compost at the nursery, and it’s starting to make me itch.”

Farlan huffs a laugh beside him, letting it fly out the window to hit the roadway beneath their tires. “I thought I was being pretty subtle, all things considered. I can’t remember frowning _once_ today.”

Levi scoffs, tasting the late morning against his tongue when he breathes. “You’re about as subtle as shit in snow.” This laugh is far louder, and heavy enough that the wind can’t get a grip on it as it drops onto the backseat to rattle the farthest window. “So what’s on your mind? The winter gardens? Dinner? Isabel?”

There should’ve been more laughter then, just as loud as the first time. It should’ve shaken the cab of the truck, pushing against the wind still moaning through the windows. Instead, the silence is filled to bursting with the smell of freshly-fallen rain as their tires begin to hiss against the dampness on the road ahead of them, left behind by a storm still visible in the gathered clouds atop the treeline. The only indication that Farlan had made any noise at all is the way his nostrils flare around a snort that had been too soft to hit the dashboard with any sort of force.  

Levi can feel the chill thicken between them, stiffening his fingers curled around the steering wheel.

“Are you seeing someone?”

It’s unexpected enough that even the wind holds its breath as the highway curves gently through a copse of ash trees, speckled through with poplars, and the driver’s seat creaks when Levi shifts his weight to lean his left elbow against the door. It’s too loud in the almost-sudden quiet, and the only thing it shakes loose from behind his teeth is a stalling tactic.

“Excuse me?” Levi says, arching his eyebrows, glancing away from the road only long enough to catch Farlan watching him. “Am I _what?_ ”

It’s a skill, how Farlan makes the act of eye-rolling _noisy_ , sighing theatrically just in case Levi hadn’t been able to feel it all on its own. “Are you _seeing_ anyone? Dating anyone? Going steady? Making eyes? Flirting? Considering? Seeking a relation—“

“I _get it_ , thank you.” Evergreen needles sigh to either side of them as the truck’s slipstream ruffles the branches as they pass by. “Why the fuck are you asking?”

The cluster of trees gives way to emptier ground, cleared of woodland decades before, and the air pressure changes for the second time, pressing down on Levi’s eardrums with heavy palms. Farlan doesn’t speak again until he rolls the windows up against the too-rough breeze, the barely-there scent of the trees lingering in the silence.

“You’re always in the gardens,” Farlan tells him, pushing his seat backward until he can prop his workboots on the dashboard. “Mostly. And when you’re _not_ , you’re always staring at something else.” There’s a pause that tastes like dead leaves and pine needles, and then, “I’ve never seen you look at the gardens like you didn’t know what the fuck you were doing. So I thought that something else probably had your attention.”

For a split-second, Levi wants to tell Farlan the truth. He can feel it hitting the back of his tongue like a cough, pressing against the backs of his teeth to wait until an inhale last a heartbeat too long, breaking the seam of his lips. The truth tastes a lot like love does—like summer bleeding into autumn, like plant-life after a rainstorm, like salted sunflower seeds and coffee beans.

It makes his stomach knot in the way that hunger does, and in that heartbeat worth of time Levi wants to tell someone so badly that it _aches_ in the roots of his teeth.

 _the crown-fucking-prince kissed me,_ Levi wants to say, can feel the words fizzing in his mouth, between his teeth, in his sinuses. _he was beautiful and he kissed me and i can kiss him whenever the fuck i want._ But his jaw locks around the feeling until he can swallow it, until it settles in his abdomen like a stone. It’s forbidden, what they’d done—something that, in an earlier age, Levi might’ve been willing to die for, if someone had asked him to.

But it’s not that age, anymore. It’s just the age where it’s a secret, where Levi flirts with something _dangerous_ , like a sunflower pulled too close in sunlight. It’s the age where Eren can smile and say with absolute fucking confidence ‘ _we figure it out_.’

When Levi speaks next, his voice is even. “I’d heard the Prince had been spending more time there. In the gardens, I mean. I’d never been so popular before, so I wasn’t sure what the fuck to change them to. What if I got a bad review when the seasons changed? That’d be embarrassing.”

It’s a lie, more-or-less—the moment where the truth had been almost tangible is gone before Levi can blink against the sunlight peeking through the clouds. But it’s a lie that makes Farlan laugh like he’s supposed to, soothing the chill that the open windows had let in as they’d left the nursery behind them.

“He does seem kind of lonely, doesn’t he?” Farlan crosses his ankles, his jeans rustling when he moves. “The Prince. Even when he’s got his Guards with him.”

Levi’s fingers are cold against his mouth when he says, “I guess so.”

(“ _labors of love,”_ Eren had said to him once, speaking into the summer heat, haloed by sunlight in a way that should’ve been impossible from where it had been hanging in the sky. His voice had split the humid silence like fabric shears cutting through cloth. “ _that’s what my mother calls things like this._ ”

“ _things like this_ ,” Levi had repeated back to him, had felt a smile pulling at his mouth even as he’d tried to keep his face smooth.

Eren had pulled his eyes away from the cosmos blossom he’d been balancing on the toe of one boot, and something had flitted across his face that could’ve been embarrassment. “ _you know_.” He’d rolled his shoulders in a shrug that had moved like fog over rooftops. “ _art_.”

Inside the Prince’s nervousness there had been a smile that had been soft, and beautiful, and— _something_. Something that Levi hadn’t had the words for.

“ _aw_ ,” Levi had replied, covering up the creature coming to life beneath his ribs, scrabbling at the ground with claws that couldn’t get any traction, “ _you think the gardens are art_.”

Eren had scoffed, disturbing the hair resting on his forehead, and he’d looked away. The sunburst on his forehead had played with the light around him, throwing it back against the creeping phlox curled around the edges of the alcove. It had served as a reminder of both their places—the Prince and the gardener.

At the time, Levi hadn’t known what Eren would look like without loneliness carving out his features into sharp lines.  Levi hadn’t really known what a labor of love was, either. There were a lot of things Levi hadn’t known, as the sunlight cast the Prince’s eyelashes in gold.

And he wouldn’t figure it out until he’d looked at the barren gardens through autumn’s eyes, the taste of Eren’s kiss still sitting against the flat of his tongue.)

“I hear he’s been happier, lately,” Farlan says as shadows the size of thumbprints rise in front of them, their already-smudged edges blurred further by the clouds piled high on the forward horizon. It’s almost impossible to tell that they’re mountains from this distance, especially with the palace rising up out of the sunflower field, made to catch the eye. “All the staff’s talking about it, how different he looks.”

Levi wishes that Farlan had left the windows open, if only so the chill could ease the burning in his throat. “Oh yeah?”

“Yep.” Farlan smiles, wide and easy, as if he’s privy to information that Levi couldn’t possibly fathom, as if Levi had never seen the way Eren looked when he’d smiled wide enough to reveal the dimple tucked away in one cheek. “Which you’d know if you were around more often so Isabel and I could keep you in the loop for once. Do you _understand_ all the hot gossip you miss when you’re tending the gardens, or walking out to the compost by the stables, or trimming the bushes by the entryway, or—“

“Or doing my job?” Levi interrupts him, keeping his eyes away from the sunflowers swaying gently, their heads becoming almost too heavy for their stems to hold up now that the summer has ended. “It sounds like you’re annoyed that I’m doing my job.”

Farlan shoves him, jostling his elbow from where it had been resting against the door. “ _No_. I was just saying that you’d know that you didn’t need to worry so much about this season’s gardens if you’d gotten to hear about the Prince’s good mood, or whatever. Then you wouldn’t’ve needed to rush me.” His smile widens further, giving the glimpse of teeth.

“You’re just moaning because the royal nanny could uproot the gardens better than you.”

The palace gates open wide for them as Levi eases the truck onto the main driveway, the tires huffing against the concrete. “The _royal nanny_ is a member of the Prince’s Guard! I’m sure he could uproot a tree all by himself, or something like that. He swings swords and prevents assassinations for a living. Cut me some slack.”

It’s easier to talk like this as they get farther away from where the conversation had started. Levi almost doesn’t notice when the gravel pathway toward the standalone garage begins to crunch under the weight of the truck, bouncing them along the side of the palace, between the main structure and the outermost wall and into the open mouth of the building itself.

The sun meets them when they hop out of the cab of the truck, stretched along the whitewashed stone of the floor as it journeys through the wide windows tucked into the wall beneath the line of the ceiling. Whatever clouds had been lurking behind the wandering storm system have disappeared by now, leaving behind only the chill and the smell of car exhaust mixed with fresh rainfall.

The two of them linger by the mouth of the garage, a breeze whistling quietly between the palace vehicles parked behind them.

“So,” Levi says, swatting aside the wind’s autumnal whisper, “are you ready to take a look at the crape myrtles? Some of them might need trimming well before the first frost.”

Farlan grins a little, his teeth peeking out from behind his lips. “I’ll meet you in the eastern courtyard. I’m gonna grab Isabel first so we can split some of the labor.” Something in his eyes catches light when he turns his head, and it looks a lot like mischief. “And I have to rain on her parade, since she thought you were seeing someone.”

Levi’s body was built to tell lies, and when he rolls his shoulders in a shrug, this time isn’t any different. “Is it really my fault that you two let your imaginations run away with you? If anything, you ought to be ashamed at yourselves. Who’d lower their standards to someone with such a piss-poor sense of humor?”

(Eren’s mouth would twist if he were here. His lips would thin and color would rise into his cheeks and his fingers would be callused against Levi’s face. There would be something in his eyes that would scream offense, and his nose would wrinkle, and Levi would be able to see every comeback roll across his face as he considered each in turn.

“ _you can’t say that_ ,” Eren would probably decide on, and Levi would already have lifted his own hands to press a thumb to the corner of his lips. “ _i’ve got the highest standards in the world_.” He’d lower his voice, and he’d smile, and Levi would know that he’d let this happen to himself. “ _i’m the prince_.”)

Farlan only shoves him, and Levi moves with it, taking to steps to the side. “ _Whatever_.” Exasperation gives his words momentum enough to hit the far wall like a stone. “I’ll see you in the courtyard, boss.”

The gravel crunches beneath his boots as he hands back up toward the main driveway on foot, shaking his head hard enough to toss his hair from side to side. It’s enough to make Levi snort against the scent of gasoline fumes as he turns to take the back exit out of the garage, stepping into the shadows cast by the main palace. One of the many staff doors is cut into the stonework of the wall across the open space between the garage and the palace-proper.

Levi drops back into the pulse of palace life when the door falls shut behind him, his footsteps bouncing between the corridor’s walls.

It’s almost enough to muffle the sound of bootsteps tailing him. But this wing of the palace is almost empty at this time of day, and there’s no ambient shuffle of other employees, no conversation or raucous laughter to hide the Guardsman at Levi’s back.

He gives the Guardsman five more footsteps to speak before he says, “can I help you?”

To the Guard’s credit, his feet to stumble against the floor, but there’s a hesitation between one step and the next. It’s only for a moment, there and gone in a way that would’ve been almost unnoticeable in the chaos of midday. And then the voice comes from behind him, as expected, and Levi recognizes it. It almost makes him _laugh_.

“You’re the groundskeeper?” Jean Kirschtein asks him, his tone clipped, his words hitting the floor like pieces of glass. He sounds just like he had in the gardens: ‘ _that is_ not _how you speak to a member of the royal family, and you might want to check your_ fucking _tone before you_ —‘

Levi stops and turns, the shadows wrapping around his shoulders and clinging to his fingertips. “I’m the _head_ groundskeeper, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve got two assistants.” Jean has stopped in front of him, the soft light dimming the colors of his Guard leathers—seafoam green and white gold, the colors of the Crown Prince. There’s no dirt anywhere on him, so chances are he’s not the one who had to eat dirt today under Eren’s skill. He’s been waiting for this. “So, again: can I fucking help you,” a pause, thick in the emptiness of the staff hallway, “sir?”

His eyes harden to something that could be sand turned to glass, and his lips thin enough to look bloodless. It must be rare to be questioned like this—the Prince’s and the palace guard speak with the Queen Regent’s own voice, most days. “The Prince is stupid when he’s in the gardens.”

Levi clamps his teeth down so hard that he can feel it in the soles of his feet, and whatever words had been between them grind to dust against his back molars. “Are you accusing me of something?” His voice feels dangerous when it crawls across his tongue and he doesn’t sound like himself. Or, rather, he sounds like himself, but he doesn’t sound like the version that he _likes_. It sounds like— _he_ sounds like—he sounds wrong.

(“ _what is it that you want me to do?_ ” Levi had dropped his voice into something flat, tucking his emotions against the bottom of his lungs like he’d been doing for years of his life. He’d kept his eyes forward, fixed on a stained glass window that hadn’t been cleaned maybe as long as he’d been alive.

“ _i want you to end an empire_ ,” the voice had told him, the sound of metal on stone—the sound of an axe against uneven rock.)

“You spend a lot of time on it,” Jean tells him. He doesn’t wield words as well as Eren does. He blunders with them like someone who’s never held a weapon before trying to strike a killing blow. “I was wondering if you noticed him getting stupid.”

There _is_ an accusation there, and something hits the underside of Levi’s sternum with enough force to steal his breath. It’s—his heart?

No—no. It’s the hungry thing clawing against the inside of his chest, pushing past his lungs to press against his ribcage, rolling beneath his skin in a way that makes him sick. It’s heavy enough to almost bring him to his knees, and Levi wonders how he’d never noticed it before as it had grown inside him. How does a man not know that he’s starving to death?

The air in the corridor freezes when Levi says, “you know, you’re the second person today to accuse me of being a workaholic. I’m not sure what that has to do with His Highness?” Eren’s title cuts at his gums, drawing blood near the roots of his teeth. It feels weird to say it now—no, it feels _uncomfortable._

(“ _can you not say... that_.” Eren’s voice had been a desert wind against a thick carpet. He’d sounded like Levi had _punched_ him. Levi’s face had been hot with the monster called terror, because when he’d reached out for Eren, the Prince had just slipped through his fingers. It had been betrayal to say it then.

It feels like betrayal to say it now.)

“Have you noticed anything weird about the Prince?” Jean is standing at a guard’s rest, his hands held behind his back, his feet a shoulder-width apart. Even the gentle glow of the wall sconces can’t soften the jut of his shoulders when he sets his jaw that way. “He’s been spending a lot of time in the gardens, and it seems to be making him _stupid_.” His nostril’s flare as if he’s breathing in fire, and Levi wants to hit him. “Or are _you_ making him stupid?”

Levi’s muscles are loose when he steps forward, and the soles of his boots are silent against the stone floor. “Does he know that you talk about him like that?” Even his vocal chords vibrate differently when he speaks like this. Levi had thought he’d killed this part of him. “That you put so little faith in the judgement of your future Regent? Or do you just do this on your off-time?” Levi leans forward, tilting his head up only slightly. “Do you interrogate the kitchen staff? I hear he spends a lot of time talking to them.”

Jean’s face blanches, his expression falling away from his features like a mask cast aside. “No, I—“ He stops, swallowing, as if whatever he’d been about to say catches against his tonsils. And then his eyebrows come together, his mouth pulled downward with the weight of whatever it is that’s on his mind. “No.”

The life huffs out of him, pushed from his nose.

Levi waits.

“I’m just—worried,” Jean continues after a moment. “He spends so much time in the gardens. He spends so much time _alone_ , or whatever. He reaches out and touches a wall and it’s like—it hurts him, I think.” He doesn’t drop his eyes in deference. Levi doesn’t drop his own, either. “I was wondering if you knew anything.”

When Levi speaks next, he sounds like himself again, “I’m flattered by the amount of power that you think I have. Or the shit you think I hear.”

The bend of Jean’s eyebrows deepens and his mouth shifts into a grimace, revealing the hint of canines. “I’ve never stopped an assassination attempt before, you know?” Jean shifts his weight between his feet, his boots scraping against the floor. “I feel inept, and like something terrible is coming, and the Prince is _different_ , and he won’t tell me shit when I ask.” He shifts again and his hands come from behind his back to rest at his sides. “I was looking for you because I’d hoped you’d seen him more, or _something_.”

“Kid,” Levi tells him, tells himself, tells the shadows still clinging to his skin in a way he’d thought they’d stopped doing years ago, “I’m just a fucking gardener.”

It’s a lie he’s been telling for a decade now. It’s hasn’t felt like one in almost that long.

Jean clears his throat, the sconce-light drawing long shadows against the side of his throat when he swallows. “The gardens don’t look bad, you know. For the season where everything is on its way out.”

“Gee,” Levi replies, “thanks. It warms my heart, really. Touches me.” He arches both his eyebrows then, turning back toward the corridor’s mouth. “Does that mean I’m free to go back to work now, _sir?_ ”

Jean scoffs, quiet enough that it brushes against the floor like a fog. It flickers across his face, shutters his eyes, and brings the rigidity back to his shoulders as he slips back into his Guardsman’s skin. “You’re free to go _, groundskeeper._ Thanks for your time.” A pause, this one filled with no sound at all. And then, “honor for your service.”

It’s a guard’s dismissal—a soldier’s. It makes something churn in his gut, makes him remember the way his forehead had felt when he’d pressed it to the starchart of the floor in the royal family’s Sunlit Hall.

Levi doesn’t say anything to that. Doesn’t say anything at all.

His bootsteps are still silent as he makes his way back down the hallway, taking a corner and a doorway and another corner. He can feel the shadows still pulling at his clothes with greedy fingers, can feel them pulling at his heels like he’s walking through gelatin.

Jean doesn’t follow him.

(The sun burns away the shadows when he steps out into the eastern courtyard, cutting through corridors that grounds’ staff like him can only cross at nighttime when the palace is run on a skeleton crew of guards and those from the kitchens. His lungs fill with something that’s fresh and tastes like nothing but grass and recent rainfall.

“ _what’s the matter?_ ” Isabel’s voice carries on bird’s wings, her tree sheers held aloft in one hand as she stands beside Farlan in the scattered shade of a line of crape myrtle trees. The breeze that had followed them back to the palace rattles their branches. “ _you look like you’ve seen a ghost._ ”

Levi’s voice has the polished shine of fresh glass when he says, “ _boo_.” He breathes out the past from where it sits on his tongue. “ _i’m the ghost of the shit you could’ve been doing while i got stopped on the way here._ ”

Isabel laughs, her pigtails resting above her collarbones. Farlan groans like someone years older that he is.

 _i’m just a fucking gardener_ , he’d said. And it had been a lie in many parts. He’d never been just a gardener. And even now, with the sun brushing across the back of his neck, he knows it’s a lie. But it’s a different lie, in light like this. It’s a lie that makes it easier to breathe. It rubs the past away from the front of his brain, bringing something else to the forefront entirely.

Levi thinks of the way that he’d built the gardens this season—thinks of the way he’d positioned the latticework and the hanging plants and the streetlamps to give the shorter days every opportunity to press its fleeting kisses against Eren’s nose, his jaw, his throat, his ear, his hair. He thinks of how beautiful Eren had looked, wrapped inside flowers of a darker color, the way it had brought out the deeper tones of his skin.

Levi had done that. He’d put them together, had shaped the gardens in his mind’s eye around the way Eren would look within them.

He’s more than a fucking gardener, surely. He’s an _artist_ now.

Labors of love, and all that.

And, really, does this version count as a lie if he’s the only one who knows?

“ _what are you grinning about over there, boss?_ ” Farlan asks him, almost shouting across the grass that’s dying beneath their feet, thinning out to reveal soil holding onto its richness for the spring. “ _does our labor amuse you?_ ”

Levi only smiles. Snorts. The chill freezes the inside of his nose.

There aren’t any more clouds above them, from horizon to horizon.)

-

(Eren had never been given a gift like this before.

The gardens had already started to wear their newer colors in the way that the summer had—like wedding garments, shifting in different shades of red and orange gold instead of the ripple-sigh of softer pastels. The wind that pulled its fingers through the new season’s blossoms was colder, and its touch had become far less gentle as it danced its way down the packed-earth pathways, laughing to the sound of leaves whispering together.

Even the sound of his boots had been different as he’d wandered through the suddenly-nameless flowers, sharper without the weight of the humidity to muffle them. _Everything_ looked different now—and everything felt different too.

“ _you look like you’re about to cry_.” Jean’s voice had broken through the late morning with the force of pebbles against a wooden door. Eren had almost missed it entirely. “ _your highness_.” His title had been spoken like an afterthought, barely tacked onto the end of Jean’s sentence at all.

“ _what?_ ” Eren hadn’t sounded like himself, his throat feeling far tighter than it had when he’d breathed last. He’d cleared his throat against whatever it was that was clogging it, watching flowers that looked like yellow-orange cattails bend almost half-over as a breeze rolled over them. “ _excuse me?_ ”

“ _you_ ,” Jean had spoken slowly, easing to a stop along the pathway, turning his body to face Eren in a way he’d learned to do years ago, his eyes only dropping in the loosest sense of deference, “ _look like you’re about to cry. are you okay?”_

Eren’s skin had started to stretch around a feeling, threatening to tear at the seams of his shoulders and the junction of his hips. His bones had begun to ache, creaking as he’d stopped just before one of the wooden bridges, a stream filled almost to overflowing with fresh rainfall babbling against the smooth stones inside it.

 _i wanted it to be... yours_ , Levi had told him, days before. _from me._

The gardens had been something unquantifiable, too expansive and too _much_ for words, and Eren hadn’t known what it would feel like as he’d ridden the sensation of Levi’s lips, Levi’s hands, Levi’s body pressed against his own. He hadn’t known how the born-again gardens would look when Levi wasn’t there, without Levi to hold the flowers’ attention like a star hung in their center.

And Eren had no idea how to return... all of _this_.

“ _your highness?_ ” Jean said for the third time, his eyebrows arching so far up his forehead that they’d almost pressed themselves against his hairline.

His windpipe had felt too thin all over again as he’d said, “ _have you ever thought about what you’d want if you could ask for anything? as a general question._ ” His mouth had gone dry as if there’d been cloth in his mouth, and he’d continued, “ _like, if you could ask the queen regent for whatever the fuck you wanted.”_

Jean had looked at him, lips pressed thin. The stream murmured at his back, the toe of one boot tracing circles against the dirt beneath it. Moments stretched out while Jean’s jaw worked around something, and the conversation almost died there, until Jean replied with unparalleled gravity, “ _a vacation_.”

Eren shoved him for that.)

The sunsets are getting noticeably earlier now.

Nighttime falls over the sunflower field in the way a curtain would, easing toward the horizon until even the halo of daylight around the flowers’ drooping heads has disappeared. The soil huffs softly beneath Eren’s palms as he leans back against them, the afternoon’s warmth all but sucked away by the early dusk, and when he breathes, there’s no more lingering taste of summer hitting the back of his tongue.

It’s beautiful, really. After all, Eren isn’t really himself until the sun goes down.

“I can’t fucking believe you managed to get here before me.” Eren turns toward the whisper of the sunflowers behind him, parting against the motion of Levi’s hands, their heavy heads bobbing gently. It’s an echo, a little, of the first time they’d met. The sunflowers had been watching them both, though the sun had been higher then, and Levi had been dusted over with whatever that day’s work had been.

Eren hadn’t known how his life would change, then.

“One of my Guards is getting permissive in his old age,” Eren says, lifting his hand from the dirt to reach for Levi—and his fingers are cold when he laces them together. “I told him I was going to bed really early because the cold was making my joints stiff, and he told me to have fun doing whatever it is kids do these days.”

A smile rises to Levi’s mouth, softening his features in a way that the twilight can’t quite manage. “And kids these days want to go gallivanting in a sunflower field on a night off?”

It’s unreal, how fucking _unearthly_ he is. Something divine made Levi with loving hands, thumbed his cheekbones out of marble, and _holy shit_ , Eren had kissed him. Eren had kissed him, and he can _keep_ kissing him. He can keep kissing him _forever_ , for the rest of his life. “I wanted to know what they smelled like.”

Recognition flickers across Levi’s face as he crouches down beside him, the sunflowers beginning to murmur to one another as a breeze rolls over them. “And is the smell to the liking of Your Highness?” It’s like looking into stormclouds, having Levi this close. Eren can feel the hairs rise on his arms, can almost smell ozone as if lightning is about to strike them both.

“We find it to be acceptable,” Eren tells him, watching Levi’s eyes move across his face, lingering on his lips when he speaks.

Levi’s laughter isn’t any louder than the whisper-creak-sigh of the sunflowers around him, and it’s low enough to twist Eren’s stomach with something too warm for autumn. “You know,” Levi says, leaning close enough to brush their noses, even as his shoulders stiffen at how close they are, “I thought I’d never speak to you again after that, so I almost fucking laughed at you.”

“You should’ve laughed at me,” Eren replies. “It would’ve made it easier to win you over when I found you later.”

“Shut up,” the words are traced against Eren’s lips, curling his toes inside his sneakers. “I should’ve known I wouldn’t stand a fucking chance against you.”

The kiss tastes of coffee and mint leaves, and Levi’s lips are even rougher as they move over Eren’s own now that the longer days have left them behind and the chill has set in. But the fingers of Levi’s free hand are gentle as they brush over Eren’s jawline, as his thumb drags over the line of his cheekbone, as his head tilts to the side to make it easier on them both.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Levi parts his lips underneath the quick motion of Eren’s tongue, but something _always_ uncurls beneath his ribs, wrapping around his lungs and _squeezing_ , leaving him breathless the second that their tongues meet one another. Angles change and they get closer, Levi’s knees press into the dirt, Eren’s fingers dig into the soil deep enough that he can feel it beneath his fingernails, and—

Levi pulls away from his mouth, inhaling sharply as he presses their foreheads together, rubbing them back and forth against one another slowly, ruffling Eren’s bangs. The dusk is dragging its shadows over the shape of Levi’s face, but not even the coming nighttime is enough to mute the way his eyes are glittering like that.

“Come on.” Eren hadn’t known Levi’s voice could sound like that—like sand against a wood floor, raspy and tight beneath a pressure he isn’t sure he knows the word for. “Let’s go for a walk. What’s the point in getting a free pass outside the palace if we’re just going to sit here all night? We could do that in the gardens.”

When he rises, Levi’s nose traces over the curve of Eren’s eyebrow until his lips find the sunburst in the center of his forehead. It isn’t until he’s tugging Eren up to stand beside him that he realizes that it had been kissed at all.

But he can feel the realization in the soles of his feet, in the way his stomach tightens, in the way the heat rises to his cheeks. It’s... intimate, what Levi had just done. No one’s ever kissed his tattoo that way, with the gentle brush of skin over skin, barely anything at all. Not even his _mother_ had kissed his forehead after he’d gotten it inked there, leaving it to be admired in a distant way, or by something far less corporeal than whatever lives on earth.

His mouth feels just a little bit dryer then, as if a desert had made a home against his tongue.

Levi pulls on his hand for the second time, starting them both forward through the sea of sunflowers. Their footsteps are almost-silent against the dirt, but the flowers make all the noise for them as they move around their shoulders, brushing their petals over Levi’s cheeks and his hair with reverent touches. It’s always a little bit spectacular, watching Levi move through a world he’d made. The gardens love him dearly, and the sunflowers are no different.

(Eren’s voice had almost broken when he’d asked, “ _i make you think of sunflowers?”_ The leaves on the creeper vine had trembled in the silence afterward, the breeze settling against the dirt beneath the gazebo, holding its own breath as Levi had looked at him. The lamplight had made Levi’s eyes look almost mercurial, like the color had been made of something liquid.

“ _yeah,”_ Levi had said. “ _you do._ ”)

He can see, a little, why Levi thinks of sunflowers when he thinks of him—Eren loves Levi like they do.

“So,” Eren says with a voice much stronger than he thought it would be, “what did you get up to today without me to keep you entertained with all my incredible tales of intrigue and political systems? Did you have another cult meeting, or?”

Levi laughs again, but this one carries over the field itself, hooking itself on the breeze to cast itself upward. “Farlan and I went into the city for a minute. We had a _shitload_ of compost to get rid of—old clippings from the summer gardens, shit that we couldn’t use to set the new plants. The nursery where we get all our shit from takes it off our hands to use for their stock, so it’s a win-win.” Levi’s palm is warming against Eren’s own. He can feel it when Levi squeezes his fingers. “The militant gardener meeting was brief today. Almost nothing to dissent against when everything starts to die, except maybe the price of tropical plants.”

Eren snorts, swinging their hands gently back and forth between them. “Sounds like you were busy.”

 _i missed you_ , is what he means, hiding it against his back teeth when he swallows. It’s a stupid thing to say when they see each other so much.

“I was a little busy. Had to trim the crape myrtles, since the first frost seems like it’s coming faster this year, and I don’t want them _dead_. They were fucking _expensive_.” The pad of Levi’s thumb presses against Eren’s knuckles and a smile touches the corners of his mouth. “How about you? You were in meetings all day, right?”

Levi’s hair smells like the gardens when Eren presses his cheek against it with a groan. “It was _long_. We had a video conference about the end of the fiscal year that just passed, and there’s a festival coming up in three weeks. The capital has its own celebration, like every _other_ city, but we’re throwing our own for the Governors and other nations here at the palace.” He hides whatever wistfulness that had risen from his chest underneath his tongue, pressing on it hard enough to make it disappear entirely. “We had to decide who to _invite_.”

“The price of power.” Levi’s nose is cold when it bumps against his cheek, and Eren thinks he feels the ghost of a huff across his face that could’ve been another laugh. “Are you going to skip this one too, or have the sunflowers lost their appeal?”

“ _No,_ never.” The response jumps out of his mouth before he can correct it, a reflex borne from the instant indignation that had bumped viciously against his lungs. “I mean— _no_. But I can’t skip this one. The Queen Regent and I have to dance together.” Something crawls up Eren’s throat, inky and heavy, stiffening his jaw in a way that feels so unfamiliar now that he’s spent so much time with Levi. “It’s tradition for the Regent and the Regent-to-be to celebrate the triumph of good and evil in the middle of autumn. It reminds the country who we are as leaders.”

There’s a pause that’s filled with early nighttime counts—countless crickets and evening breezes, the flutter of bats’ wings and the rustle of their clothes. And then Levi says, “who’d you put on your guest list to eat, drink, and be merry while you do the two-step in front of more than a hundred people?”

A smile is forcing its way onto Eren’s mouth, despite his efforts to keep it off his face. “I don’t fucking two-step. Gross.” Fireflies wink from deeper in the field, hovering between the stalks of the sunflowers as they seek one another out. “But I’m asking a couple Governors to bring their families. Armin and Mikasa will probably want to come. I’m asking Historia to come. She’ll probably bring her wife, which’ll be interesting.”

Levi cocks his head, as if listening for something out around them, though Eren can’t even hear any cars out on the road this way. Even the palace is quiet behind them with nothing to keep its attention.

“Historia Reiss?” Levi speaks as if from inside a tunnel, like he’s afraid his voice will carry too far if he lets it.

Eren’s fingers twitch in Levi’s grip, his skin going cold at the back of his neck. “Yeah. She invited me to her wedding, and she didn’t have to do that.”

The polished-wood smell of the palace conference room catches in his sinuses, almost as if it had followed him out of the palace. It makes the muscles in his gut coil almost too-tightly, makes his shoulders feel as if his joints had been replaced with pointed stones.

Even Levi sounds like his words are tapping against marble floors and hitting the center of stained glass windows. “I don’t guess that Her Majesty was happy about that, considering the last Regent from Yvini.”

Eren breathes in and tastes the evening for the second time—sunflowers and soil, dying plants and the barest hint of asphalt, carried from the highway some distance off. “I’m not making allies for my mother,” he says, when the afterimage of the conference room is chased away from his eyelids by the stretch of drooping sunflowers in whichever direction that he looks. “I’m making allies for me, which means I can extend my hand to whomever I see fit.”

Levi is silent as he eases them both to a stop, far enough into the field that even the palace’s braziers are barely visible above the plantline. The chill has brought a shade of pink to Levi’s cheeks that the moonlight can’t quite wash out.

He talks like his flowers, sometimes—the sigh of petals fluttering against one another, undercarried by something that makes his chest rumble with an earthquake only he can feel. This is one of those as he says, “you’re going to be an amazing King, you know that?”

It feels like there’s a mass of wet paper sticking at the back of his throat, as if his words had jumbled together on too-many pages and had become unintelligible between when he’d thought them and now. He wonders if Levi can tell that his palm is sweating, or that his fingers would be trembling if they weren’t laced together.

 _what about you?_ tastes of newspaper clippings as it sits against the backs of his front teeth. _where would you be?_

(It feels a lot like “ _what do you think i’d be doing? if i wasn’t a prince?_ ” Or—it feels like a different question. It feels like, “ _what if_ you _were a king? what would you think of me then?_ ”

And it smarts against the echoes of a memory that smells of incense and early morning, less than an hour before he’d been trapped in the conference room for more than half the day.

“ _is there anyone you want me to invite as a potential consort?_ ” His mother had asked him, her hands pressed together in front of one of the painted deities carved into the wall of her prayer chambers. The deep red curtains on her arched windows had been pulled back to let in the watery sunlight, barely breaking apart the haze left behind by her incense. “ _to the festival._ ”

Eren’s fingers had felt cold despite the closeness of the chambers, but he’d sounded for all the world like the Prince he’d been born to be when he’d replied, “ _no. there’s no one i need to see there._ ”

“ _no?_ ” It had sounded like a sincere question, and a smile had been playing with the line of her mouth. It was one of the ways she savored their time together—when they were allowed to be mother and son, instead of the Regent and her heir. “ _why not? there’s no one you can think of that you fancy?_ ”

The incense had been throwing sunlight upon her, leaving pieces of it against the gold filigree stitched into the hooded shawl over her hair. It had been his opportunity to be honest with her—or to redirect the conversation into something that would be easier to handle.

But he’d opted instead to tell her, “ _i don’t have anyone i trust enough to fuck, remember?_ ”

His mother’s gods had looked at him then, and he’d felt all of their eyebrows arch.)

“Anyway,” Eren breaks the silence that he’d allowed to settle by pointing upward at the stars beginning to blink against the deep-purple of the newborn night, “the Dragon’s Eye is coming out. See? One of the first stars to come out every night.”

Levi’s jaw sets around the questions he wants to ask—Eren can see them moving to press against the skin of his lips. He wants to know where Eren had gone when he’d given him that compliment, wants to know what thoughts had crossed his mind in that heartbeat of time between what he’d said and the conversation Eren had picked out in its place.

But Levi doesn’t ask any of them, and Eren is grateful for that.

“Did you learn that in space school, or were you a nerd when you were younger?” Levi’s skin glows when the moon touches it in a way that even sunlight can’t replicate, and it hangs on his eyelashes like gemstones, like drops of silver clinging to their length.

“Well, when you major in _astronomy,_ one of the first things they teach you is the constellations. Fuck if I know why.” Eren shrugs, shifting his index finger toward the second star newly visible against the fabric of the sky. “That one is the bottom-most point of the Herald’s Spear, but you can only see the full constellation when there’s no moon. It’s supposed to watch over us when the moon isn’t out, or something like that. According to mythology anyway.”

Levi watches his face, and Eren wears his attention like a cloak around his shoulders, falling to the dirt around his sneakers. It makes him feel like more than royalty—it makes him feel _holy_. And when Levi tucks himself against Eren’s body, he feels like more than even that. Like this is the thing that he was made for; like he was made to fill the gardens that Levi had built, like he was made to curl his arm around the slope of Levi’s spine, like he was made to stand right here, just like this.

“It’s weird not to be telling you about flowers,” Levi says. His sweater is softer than it looks when Eren brushes his fingers against it, plucking stray sunflower petals from where they’d fixed themselves upon it. “I can’t say I mind it too much. Tell me about the stars, kid.”

Eren smiles.

He was born for this.

(“ _thank you,_ ” Eren will say later, sitting back against the soil, leaning his weight against Levi’s body. His nose feel like it’s running, the chill rubbing his nostrils raw.

“ _for what?_ ” Levi will ask, snorting quietly, his eyes closed as if sleep is beginning the slow curl around his body.

“ _the gardens._ ” His voice won’t break when he says it, but it will want to. He’ll be able to feel it threatening to shatter between his teeth. “ _i never thanked you for them. it comes with breeding, see, i just forget common courtesies as if i was raised in a very expensive barn._ ”

Levi will shove him with his elbow, turning toward him with his face twisting into a grimace. He’ll be beautiful, like he always is, and Eren will feel his stomach dig its way through the earth, because otherwise it would have nowhere else to drop to.

“ _shut up_ ,” Levi will tell him, and his face will be half obscured by thin shadows, draped over his face by the flowers around them. “ _that was stupid_.”

Eren will laugh anyway, will lean forward with the taste of it in his mouth, and will press his lips to the center of Levi’s forehead—where a sunburst would be, if he’d been born the Prince instead. It’s the place where the heavens would’ve blessed him if he’d been allowed the proper blood for it. It’s the place where the universe enters the body, traveling from there to the soles of the feet where it can meet the ground beneath them, giving life in each step forward.

It’s the space that Eren will claim for his own, because everything else was too slow to claim it.

Levi’s breath will catch like he knows what it means, like he’d planned the moment where he’d kissed Eren’s given-right when the day had given way beneath the early sunset.

“ _eren_ ,” Levi’s voice won’t tremble, or anything like that, but his breath will be uneven as if it wants to, and _heavens above_ , will it ever stop kicking him in the chest when Levi says his name like that—“ _i’m going to kiss you now_.”

“ _okay_ ,” Eren will reply, already bowing to meet him.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a moment, Eren forgets about his aching feet, and the soreness in his muscles, and the stretch of his shoulders, and stinging of his lower back. He forgets about the way his head feels, as if it’s held too-tightly in his circlet. There’s a warmth in his fingertips that hadn’t been there before, and it spreads up his forearms, pushing through his body in a wave.
> 
> It brings him to his feet, autumn stirring around his ankles as he does. 
> 
> “Okay,” he says, offering out both his hands to Levi. It’s a win, Eren thinks, that they aren’t shaking. “So dance with me now.” It’s a win, too, when Levi smiles up at him, even though everything about his posture is calling Eren fucking ridiculous just then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eren and levi love each other so much, wtf...

(Eren had spent much of his life awake and thinking, and the night before had been no different.

The rising sun had found Eren at the desk in his bedchambers, his laptop open just far enough that he could see himself reflected on the screen from such an angle, and the warm orange-yellow light of his desk lamp had settled on his keyboard like a sheet. The books lining the shelves of the small alcove had been tucked away in the shadows, still untouched by the notion of the coming morning, though the palace had already begun to come to life around him, especially with the festival so close.

The lamplight did nothing to mar the features of Historia Reiss as she looked back at him from her own bedchambers, still wrapped in the sleepclothes, her blonde hair settled in an artfully messy bun atop her head. 

Around her throat sat the mark of her office—a choker made of a binding Eren had never been able to recognize, with a single purple-pink amethyst inlaid in the center, gold filigree reaching outward in thin tendrils.

If there was any person in any kingdom that he could trust with this, it would be her.

“ _what do i do if i fancy a gardener?_ ” Eren had disturbed the silence of the early morning with a question that was almost too heavy for it. He’d almost been able to hear it crack, had watched the graceless scatter of his words across the surface of his desk. “ _hypothetically_.”

Her eyebrows had risen upon her forehead, getting lost in the scattered shape of her bangs, and something had glittered in her eyes, like sunlight reaching deeper into a lake than it had any right to go. Her lips had tensed for a heartbeat, as if this question had thorns that he’d been unable to see.

But then she’d smiled, and she’d shifted against her pillows, and the morning made its way through her bedroom windows just enough to turn her hair a deeper gold. Color had been hiding in the apples of her cheeks, and the sun is making it impossible to ignore.

“ _that’s a weird question for so early in the morning,_ ” she’d replied, had lifted one of her hands to her mouth to hide the smile he could see forming around the corners of her eyes. “ _i’d thought you were calling to take back your invite to the festival. i’d prepared a speech and everything._ ”

Eren had huffed softly, had pushed his hair away from his forehead, and had shaken his head slowly. “ _no. nothing that extreme. i was just—advice. i was asking for—i mean, you pretty successfully fucked your bodyguard, to the point where she felt like marrying you was a great idea, despite the fact that she has to wear all that itchy shit your country loves, and i—how do you even start something like that?_ ” He’s swallowed and tasted dirt, scraping against the backs of his teeth. “ _i don’t even know how to return—you got_ married, _and i can’t even—“_  He’d felt stupid, for that. For _all_ of that.

But he’d known, of course, that he’d lost sleep over dumber things.

Historia’s smile had softened as she looked at him, and she’d adjusted her own computer’s position on her lap.

“ _eren_ ,” she’d said, and her voice hadn’t been any louder than a misting rain, or a breeze through dying grasses, or ocean waves against sand, “ _do you know the most precious thing a regent has to give to someone else?_ ”

Anyone could’ve walked in on him at any time. They would’ve seen him hidden away inside his personal alcove, and they would’ve seen textbooks stacked upon his desk. They would’ve seen his laptop open, would’ve heard him murmuring nervously to the image of a Regent whose international respect was minimal so early in her reign, and they would’ve known his deepest secret. He’d been certain he could be punished for that—just like he’d been certain Levi could suffer for it, too.

But he’d returned her smile, had leaned forward on his desk, and he’d said, “ _no._ ” His words had tasted of honey. “ _but i sure would like to_.”)

It isn’t until Eren’s lying down that he realizes just how much his feet hurt.

“You look exhausted.” The silver creeper vine whispers as Levi pulls the stone lattice shut behind him, stepping into the muffled quiet of the hidden alcove, the autumn evening stiffening the grass beneath his boots just enough to make them crunch as he makes his way toward the gazebo’s stairs. “Long day?”

Eren sees Levi’s shadow flit between the gazebo’s columns before he sees his body, and the breeze pushing itself up and over the lattice-walls brings with it the smell of fresh coffee. The smell of _nice_ fresh coffee. The smell of fresh coffee from the _kitchens_.

He pushes himself upright enough to sit, shaking out his hair enough that his circlet feels less heavy against his skull, though his clothes feel stiff where they’d settled against him, and his palace-wear dress boots pinch his toes when he moves. But it feels like there’s liquid in his joints when Levi looks at him like that, a small smile sitting on his face with one eyebrow arched just high enough to be thoughtful rather than judgmental.

He’s breathtaking, standing there with the lamplight from the wrought-iron sconces curling around his shoulders and his cheekbones and his elbows and his _calves_. He’s spectacular, even with fresh soil smeared on his pants and the front of his work shirt, even with his suspenders slightly crooked, even when his own exhaustion is hiding away in the angle of his hip and the slope of his throat and the shadows beneath his eyes.

Eren can feel his pulse flutter, a little.

And then he drops his eyes to the thermoses Levi has in his hands, and the smell of coffee suddenly makes sense.

“You stopped by the kitchens first?” Levi’s fingers are cold as they brush against Eren’s own, the first thermos settling comfortably in his grip. There’s steam rising from the mouth of the lid, curling like a sigh against the chill before it disappears.

Levi shrugs, taking a seat beside him on the polished bench that lines the inside of the gazebo, his own thermos held between both his hands. “I figured that we could both use some. I saw you pacing the palace today—back-and-forth, back-and-forth.” He leans closer, and his words come out on a soft cloud, like the steam rising from the mug. “Besides, it’s getting chilly. It’s about the time of year for constant coffee.”

Levi rights himself before Eren can shift to kiss him, pressing his lips to the mouth of the thermos he’d brought himself.

“Thank you,” Eren tells him, making up for his missed opportunity by sipping from his own coffee. It’s almost too-warm, and there’s enough sugar in it to send weaker people into cardiac arrest. But it’s perfect, and it’s _delicious_ , and in chases away the cold from his nose. “I _guess_ it was worth the few minutes we lost—you, in the kitchens. Me, here.”

A huff of air from his nose, and Levi is snickering, bumping his elbow against Eren’s gently. “You _guess_. You’re so greedy.” Chapped lips brush over the curve of Eren’s cheek before he can turn his head to catch them in a proper kiss.

“I am.” Their noses brush together, then their foreheads, and Eren can’t help but smile. “Way greedy. _Gross_ greedy.”

Levi lifts one of his hands, brushing his thumb beneath Eren’s eye, a fleeting touch. “You really do look beat, and you’re still in your... semi-formal-formal shit.” Another smile flirts with Levi’s mouth before it disappears, swallowed up by something far more concerned. “Is it the cardio that got you today, or is the fact that you don’t sleep finally catching up to you?”

His palm is warmer than his fingers when Eren leans into Levi’s touch, and whatever stiffness had been lingering in his muscles bleeds out of him entirely. “It was the cardio. Festival preparations. There were meetings and more meetings, but that was _after_ I met up with the Guards for combat practice. And after the meetings there were returned invitations that we had to go over, so we know who’s coming, and then we had to go over food and decorations. And _then_ we had to practice the dances, and what fucking songs we’d play, and all of these things happened at different ends of the palace.”

Levi’s thumb is drawing circles against Eren’s cheek—around and around and around. It’s soothing, even with his fingers as callused as they are. “Plus the fact that you don’t sleep.”

“Glass houses,” Eren says, and their noses come together for the second time. “When’s the last time _you_ got a full night’s rest, mister ‘I wander the gardens at night for fun so I can interrupt the Prince’s study time in the middle of the summer’?”

The skin of his cheek stings when Levi tugs on it, and he can feel it when Levi huffs against his mouth. He smells like sunshine and coffee, like soil and flower petals. “ _You_ were in _my_ gardens, when you have a perfectly good library, or bedroom, or _whatever_ to study in.” Levi’s knuckles soothe over the redness that his fingers had left behind. “But it sounds like we had the same day, more or less. Festival shit to prepare for. We were short some of the ceremonial flowers to decorate with, so I had to go back into the capital to get some, then had to trim some things, had to clean up the gardens, had to make sure that the decorations looked good even though _I_ didn’t put them up.”

Eren wrinkles his nose, pulling away to grimace. “And you _always_ get up early. That’s just _wrong_.” He shifts against the bench beneath him, pulling his legs close enough to cross his ankles against the floorboards. His voice feels like sand in his mouth when he says, “if you want to cut it short tonight, we _have_ been really busy. And sleep looks as good on you as anything _else_ does, so—“

“No.” Levi speaks simply, but it makes a wall that the rest of his sentence stalls against, leaving it to fall into a pile between them. “This is what I wanted. I haven’t seen you all day, and you haven’t seen _me_ all day, and this is what I made this place for.” The corners of his lips pull upward, and his eyes catch the light like stormclouds at sunset, burning from behind. “To see you, even when we’re busy.”

( _“do you know the most precious thing a regent has to give someone else?_ ”)

Eren’s mouth feels as if it’s opening around a bubble, as if his throat is stretching wide around this feeling building beneath his ribs, and it’s impossible to stop himself before he says, “you should come to the festival—the dance... thing. You should come.”

Levi blinks at him, his eyelashes kissing his cheeks, and it reminds Eren of the way he used to do things, when he wasn’t sure if Eren was being serious or not when he spoke. His mouth twists, and his eyes flick to the floor before they rise back to Eren’s face. The air around them feels warm, despite the season, and the only thing the chill does is make it easier to see their breath when the two collide between them.

“You want me to come to your party,” Levi speaks slowly, as if having Eren’s question stretched into something longer will change how he’d meant it. When Eren says nothing, Levi continues, “to your _royal_ party? With expensive clothes, and food, and people. _That’s_ where you want me to be?”

His ears sting with... embarrassment. It sounds ridiculous, when Levi says it like that. It sounds like he hadn’t thought this through, or that he hadn’t realized that this request doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, or... something. But he—of course he _knows_ that this is stupid, just like he _knows_ that it’s different than asking Levi to the barracks.

But he’d asked it anyway, and he’d meant it, and so he says, “that’s where I want you to be. You should come. Palace staff are always at these things—they just don’t, like—you should come.” Eren’s toes are sore when he curls them in his boots, and there’s sawdust in his throat when he swallows. “Please. I’d like it if you’d come.”

The flowers whisper around them, the breeze sighing between leaves and blossoms, pushing itself through the latticework, clogged with clinging creeper vine and curtained with hanging flame flowers. It makes the alcove noisy, in a way, and scatters the moths floating around the sconces, keeping them from basking in the light they cast.

The gardens do all of this while Levi watches him, his eyes moving across Eren’s face, as if there’s something deeper there that he can read.

And then Levi sighs, and he shakes his head, and he’s smiling, a little. “You want me to go to your party to see you all dressed up, looking like you do, and I won’t even get to _dance_ with you? What kind of movie are you trying to make this out to be?”

For a moment, Eren forgets about his aching feet, and the soreness in his muscles, and the stretch of his shoulders, and stinging of his lower back. He forgets about the way his head feels, as if it’s held too-tightly in his circlet. There’s a warmth in his fingertips that hadn’t been there before, and it spreads up his forearms, pushing through his body in a wave.

It brings him to his feet, autumn stirring around his ankles as he does.

“Okay,” he says, offering out both his hands to Levi. It’s a win, Eren thinks, that they aren’t shaking. “So dance with me now.” It’s a win, too, when Levi smiles up at him, even though everything about his posture is calling Eren fucking ridiculous just then.

“What?” Levi sets his thermos to the side, taking Eren’s hands in his own. “You do fucking realize that there’s no music. Don’t you have a phone, or something?”

Eren takes a step backward, tugging Levi with him, their shoes thudding softly against the floorboards. Everything sounds sharper, with the air so crisp around them both—even Levi’s laughter sounds clear and unbroken in the nighttime stillness, like _bells_ , or something like that. Like something tapping against glass windows, and trying to make a song. Something poetic, or literary— _meaningful_. Better than whatever lackluster metaphor Eren can come up with.

“Sorry,” Eren says. “I left my stereo in my room, and the Queen Regent says cell phones are dangerous. Everyone will know where I am if I carry one with me.” An expression shapes itself on Levi’s features that looks a lot like pity, and so he keeps talking, “she doesn’t like hearing about the fact that everyone knows where I am anyway, since I’m not allowed to leave the palace in the first place.”

That makes Levi’s nostrils flare, makes another laugh catch in his throat, and he squeezes Eren’s fingers gently between his own. “She _will_ kick your ass one day.”

“Maybe.” Murmurs from the palace rise above them, carried on another breeze that makes its way through the gardens, and Eren lowers his voice so much that he _feels_ it in his chest, moreso than he hears it come from behind his teeth. “So we should make the most of our time together and dance. Right now.”

Levi huffs, adjusting his weight between his feet, shifting one foot slightly behind the other. It’s more of a fighting position than one made for a dance, but Eren works with what he has. When he places one of Levi’s hands onto his own shoulder, there’s no resistance, and he proceeds to hold Levi’s other hand as delicately as possible.

But Levi’s fingers are clinging to Eren’s far tighter, and his mouth is set in a thin line. For one heartbeat. For two. And then he says, “I don’t know how to dance.”

“Are you okay with me leading?” There’s a bulldozer inside Eren’s chest, crushing everything in its path. It’s mowing down his heart, and his lungs, and all the comforting things he should say. It’s going forward far too fast to stop it now, to just drop Levi’s hands and say _forget about it_ —but Eren locks his elbows, and swallows, and his shoulders grind in their sockets as he lowers his arms. “Or—we don’t have to do this. I was being really—it’s okay. We’re tired, right, so—“

Levi lifts both their arms back up, keeping his one hand firmly on Eren’s shoulder, straightening the column of his spine into a ridge any nobleman would be proud of. “That’s not what I said. I said I don’t know how to dance. You said that you could lead.” He sets his jaw, and he holds Eren’s eyes with a force too strong to be gravity, but powerful enough that it’s impossible that it’s anything else. “So lead.”

Fire catches just beneath Eren’s sternum, and he can feel the color rising into the hollows of his cheeks. Levi _does_ look tired, really. But the lamplight casts the inside of the gazebo in shadows and in gold, and it drapes itself over Levi’s skin, his shoulders, his body. It’s too cold now for crickets to make music, but the breeze plays with the plantlife, pushes against the dirt and the grass, toys with Levi’s hair.

He’s beautiful. Levi is _beautiful_ , and this moment is too good to pass up.

( _“—the most precious thing a regent has to give someone—”_ )

Dancing is almost awkward without music. It’s just the wind and the gardens and their feet against the floorboards, which leaves a lot to be desired for rhythm. Levi hesitates on every other step, moving forward when Eren moves backward, moving right when Eren moves left. They start and they stop again, their heads coming together in laughter, their noses brushing together in a string of almost-kisses—

And then they find the beat.

Eren had chosen a Denzîc waltz, if only because waltzes have always been the easiest to fall into when there’s no other rhythm to be found. If there’d been a band, or if there’d been any music at all, it would’ve been bouncing forward with accordions and violins, with softly tapped cymbals and the punctuated hum of a string bass. But as it is, it’s just the _tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap_ of their boots against wood, each step sweeping them around the edge of the gazebo.

Levi’s cheeks are pink with the effort—or from the cold. “I should’ve been able to put together that you’d be able to fucking ballroom dance, but I didn’t think you’d be this good at it.”

Eren laughs and it tastes like coffee, and he wonders if Levi would taste just like this if they were to kiss right now. “People were teaching me to dance before they were teaching me to fight. I’m _really_ good at dancing.” His circlet is throwing light against the columns, the benches, the floor, only visible as a glimmer in his peripheral vision every time the two of them turn together. “I’m probably better at dancing than a lot of other things. Like... swimming. I can’t swim.”

Levi breathes out a laugh, tilting his head just enough that Eren can see the shape of his throat, the hollows of his collarbones.

It’s then that Eren realizes he’s not really that tired at all.

“You’re _great_ at this,” Levi tells him, and Eren can feel the waltz that neither of them can hear moving through both their bodies. Step-step-step, turn, step-step-step, look away, turn. “I bet you don’t go to parties because when you start dancing, no one can stop looking at you.”

They haven’t stopped moving, driven forward by the pulse of the rhythm they’d found, and Eren’s grateful for that. It doesn’t give his voice time to tremble. “Would you watch me?”

When Levi laughs this time, it’s breathless, carried up above them on a coalesced cloud. Eren can still smell the gardens on him. “That’s a stupid question. I can’t ever stop looking at you, anyway.” Their next steps slow down, and Levi meets the new pace with only a hairsbreadth of hesitation, and neither of them lose their momentum. And then, “but I probably wouldn’t be able to look away.”

Eren takes the next turn as if he’s going to move into another series of steps—and then he shifts their bodies, shifts their _weight_ , and dips Levi into the curve of his elbow, cradling the back of his neck with one hand. It’s not something that he’s ever tried before. It brings his face too close to his partner’s, brings their noses close enough to touching, makes it so he can feel their heartbeat through their back.

But this is different. Eren’s whole _life_ is different.

(“ _do you know the most precious thing a regent has to give to someone else?_ ” Mischief had been playing across Historia’s face, had been tugging on the loose hair falling from where it had been piled up on her head. It had been quiet enough that he could hear the rustle of her duvet, of her sheets, of her breathing.

“ _no_.” Honey and sugar water, cloying in his mouth with how sweet his words had been. “ _but i sure would like to_.”

She’d lifted her laptop to her knees, had raised them so that her face was almost too close to the camera. She’d smiled, and her lips had been pink, and he’d been able to see the holes in her earlobes where they’d been pierced years before.

“ _the only thing we have to give that no one else can ask of us is this_ ,” she’d said, soft enough to sound like they were conspiring together, and perhaps they had been. No—they _definitely_ had been. “ _us_.”

Eren had paused, had blinked, had seen the morning sunlight begin its slow journey across the stone floor. “ _what?_ ”

“ _our country gets to see only pieces of us. they get to see us smile and all that politicking that we do._ ” Her smile had widened, and at the same time it had softened. “ _but we can choose who sees the person that we are, and we can choose the person we share ourselves with. that’s our secret._ ”

“ _oh_ ,” he’d replied. “ _i never thought about it that way._ ”

Sunlight had shimmered on the amethyst around her throat. “ _and now you have._ ”)

Levi’s breaths are coming in gasps, and Eren can feel them through his splayed fingers, through the huffs ghosting across his face, can see them lifting and letting go of Levi’s shoulders. His cheeks are flushed high, color is dusted across his nose, down his throat, brushing up against his collarbones. Eren can see it beginning to turn the top of his sternum pink from this angle.

Neither of them move, then. It’s once again just them, and the breeze, and the rise and fall of their own breathing, of the air the share together, of the sudden warmth beneath the gazebo’s roof.

Eren’s voice does shake, this time. He can feel it start even before he decides on what it is he wants to say. “Come up to my room with me.”

Levi’s hand is still resting on Eren’s shoulder, and Eren can feel his fingers tighten in the fabric of his shirt. Fuck, he’s close enough to see the lamplight on the edges of Levi’s eyelashes. He’s close enough for a lot of things—for kisses, for the bumping of noses and of foreheads, for—so much.

“Come up to my room,” Eren says again, and he can feel Levi’s breath hitch against his palm, still pressed flat against his back. “Please.”

Levi’s eyes look like they’re made of starlight, gathered in the hands of the gods and given to a person. The universe was put here on this earth, and Eren is holding him in his arms. The arms he could give to him. The arms and the body and the heart and the soul of a prince, a gift from the—

“Saying no to you when you say please is so fucking difficult, do you know that?” Levi’s fingers are once again cold, and this time they’re curling around the back of Eren’s neck, their pads drawing circles against the jut of his spine. “Fucking unbelievable.”

“Pretty please,” Eren says, righting them both, resting his arms and letting Levi find his footing. “Pretty, _pretty_ please, Levi.”

His hands are trembling with his nerves as he takes Eren’s face between his hands. They don’t stop even as Levi brings him down to kiss him, nor do they relax when their mouths move over one another, or when their tongues meet, or when Eren makes his first sound into Levi’s mouth.

But when they do, they’re warm, and solid, and Levi says, “let’s go.”

-

(Their laughter had followed them through the hidden passageways, stirring gathered dust and ground-up gravel as they’d moved through them. The dim lighting caught upon the sunburst on Eren’s forehead, sometimes, and it glittered in the darkness, like some sort of beacon against the shadows that had laid themselves thickly on every surface.

It had been slow going, a little. Sometimes Eren would stop them both to steal a kiss that tasted of expensive coffee and salted sunflower seeds—and then that kiss would turn into too many to count, would turn into wandering hands, would turn into someone against a wall.

Then they would laugh, and proceed, until they rounded another corner and Levi decided that _he_ wanted a kiss—and then more than a kiss, and then rinse and repeat.

The Prince had been beautiful, even though the light had been burnt-orange and barely there, making the shadows far longer than they had any right to be. The flash of his teeth and the way his eyes would narrow, the way his hair couldn’t decide how it wanted to lay and the way it moved beneath Levi’s fingers, the way he laughed and the way he said Levi’s name like it was the key to something _miraculous_.

But, of course, the Prince had always been beautiful.

Perhaps the novelty had been this: the Prince had been beautiful, and all of this had been real, and these moments had been entirely his own.)

By the time they make it to Eren’s bedchambers, there is dust in the Prince’s hair, on his clothes, on his palms. Levi thinks he can see dust on the shoulders of his button-up, knows for sure that there’s some on the seat of his dress-pants, and yet he wears it like something tailor-made and far more costly than aged mortar, scattered along a mostly abandoned corridor.

The light here is soft and edgeless, sitting on the furniture and the floor more like fog than anything else. Even with dulled lines and blurred shapes, the décor in here doesn’t suit Eren at all—but Levi supposes that it’s not really supposed to. Eren commands the attention of any room, and when he’s standing there, bathed in _bedroom_ light, in light no one has ever seen him in.

Eren smiles, and one of his cheeks dimple, and he looks like he’s been thoroughly kissed because he _has_ , and the world falls out from beneath Levi’s feet.

Looking at him will always leave him breathless, certainly. There’s _no way_ he could ever get used to this.

“Come here,” Levi says, taking one step backward toward the stairs that lead up to the loft where Eren’s bed is hidden, even as he offers one hand out for Eren to take. “I don’t think I was done kissing you.”

Eren laughs, stepping away from the wall they’d come through, newly closed, to lace his fingers with Levi’s own and pull him close. “I’m never done kissing you. I don’t really know how I’m surviving right now, with all this festival bullshit cutting into my time with you.” He lowers his voice to something that reminds Levi of steam against glass. “When I’m King, I’ll have to take breaks just to kiss you.”

Levi can _feel_ himself freeze, then. Ice crawls up from his ankles to collect in his muscles, digging so deeply into them that it hurts to move. His fingers tighten in Eren’s grip, their tips going bloodless. It’s like cloth has been stuffed into his ears, or like it’s crawling up his throat, or like his stomach has been lined with it. Eren’s face is swimming in his vision and— _holy shit_.

(He’d never really thought about a future with the Prince, before. That isn’t to say he’d ever felt _temporary_ —Eren had never made him feel fleeting, had never made him feel like an unfortunate side-character in a greater story that was too big for him to understand. It’s just that thinking about the future meant thinking about the days that he wouldn’t be in it anymore.

He supposes that he hadn’t considered that the Prince would’ve thought about the future already, which had been stupid. Eren’s whole life had been built on thinking about the future, on thinking about his ascendance to the throne, and who would be there, and what kind of King he would be.

Perhaps, then, it had been more that Levi himself hadn’t thought that much about the future.

It had always seemed so far out of reach.)

The pause had just been a heartbeat too long, and when Eren lets go of Levi’s fingers, he finds them cold.

“Sorry.” Eren’s voice doesn’t sound right when he talks like that, even though Levi knows he’s heard him speak that way before. But these days, he’s only ever taken that tone with other people, smoothing his sentences out like polished marble, their edges sharp enough to hurt. “That was—sorry. I was getting ahead—nevermind. I wasn’t thinking—“

Levi catches dust with his knuckles as he drags them over the edge of Eren’s cheekbone, and whatever he’d been about to say stutters across his tongue, his mouth falling shut. Levi shifts his fingers against the Prince’s face, smoothing over the furrow between his eyebrows with his thumb.

“Are you going to schedule them?” Levi asks, taking another step backward, his foot hitting the bottom stair beneath the loft-space. Their shadows dance along the arched ceiling as the two of them inch toward Eren’s bed a stair at a time, pressed up to a measure of wall tucked between two cherrywood bookcases, inlaid into the stone behind them. “The breaks, I mean. Or are they going to be spontaneous?”

Eren blinks, his eyelashes holding onto the lamplight in the bedroom like teardrops. “I... haven’t decided yet. Both, probably. Scheduled breaks for political detox. Spontaneous breaks for when I want to surprise you.”

The white-gold circlet, pressed to Eren’s hair, isn’t as cold against Levi’s fingertips as he thought it would be. “What about if I want to surprise you? Spontaneously.” The Prince’s circlet whispers against his hair as Levi lifts it from his head, taking another step backward. A too-plush rug breathes against the soles of his workboots. “What then?”

As close as they are, Levi can see Eren’s pupils go wide, can watch as his eyelids droop just a little when he glances at Levi’s mouth. “Um. That’s acceptable. But what if you were at the meeting with me? Just a—like a state meeting. What would you...” Eren trails off when Levi’s calves hit the mattress, and he’s just close enough to the bedside table to rest Eren’s circlet there. “I didn’t know you’d thought about it?”

There’s wind pushing against the balcony’s double-doors, rattling the doorframe softly. “I’m thinking about it now.”

“Oh,” and it’s the sound of sunflowers brushing against one another. “Okay.”

Eren’s left hand splays across Levi’s chest, and it’s with a gentle push that Levi finds himself seated on the Prince’s bed, looking up at a man born to rule. He can see it in the set of Eren’s jaw, in the shape of his shoulders, in the absolute perfection of his posture. He’s _always_ been able to see this, and for a moment he wonders why he’d denied himself the Prince for so long. Surely they could’ve met sooner than this. Surely they would’ve been friends regardless. Surely this moment would be in their future anyway, because the two of them have to be some kind of _inevitable_.

( _“i want you to end an empire_.”)

There’s a split-second where Levi remembers _exactly_ why—remembers all the trouble that this shit could land him in. He remembers what he’d done to get into the palace, and what he’d done to become a fucking gardener. He remembers that he’d chosen to keep to himself because he’d been sure that Eren would recognize him, because he’d known that if worse came to worse the best way to protect the Prince would be to be as far away from him as possible.

And then he watches Eren drop to his knees, and memories seem to be the _least_ important thing to be paying attention to.

“Is this okay?” The fabric of the Prince’s dress pants hiss against the rug at Levi’s feet, and his hands push their way up Levi’s thighs with undisguised _intent_ , despite the tremor in his fingers. The sound that Levi makes is closer to a wheeze than anything that might’ve been a question, or a sentence, or a _word_.

Levi’s mouth is dry. He can feel grit between his teeth, in his throat, in his stomach. He feels like a piece of fruit left out too long in the sun. When his breath comes to him, it scalds his tonsils, burns against his ribs, and then he says, “what?”

Eren’s so nervous—he’s so _nervous_ , and it’s all over his perfect fucking face, and his eyebrows are rising, and it makes the sunrise on his _fucking_ forehead, and Levi’s heart kicks so hard in his chest that it almost makes him cough.

“Is _this_ okay?” Eren asks again, and this time his hands are slower as they move over Levi’s jeans. He thinks he can feel the Prince’s touch through them. “The—this. All of this. Is it—are _you_ okay?”

There are needles biting into his skin everywhere as Eren’s eyes move over his body with all the weight of his presence. “I didn’t think we were going to be having _dinner_ in your bedroom,” Levi tells him, tracing the knuckle of his index finger over the curve of Eren’s left eyebrow, and it’s getting a little easier to breathe, if not by much. “This is okay. But what the _fuck_ are you doing on your knees when you could be up here with me?”

( _you don’t belong there,_ he wants to say, but the words catch and tumble over one another, as if they can’t get a grip on his tongue. _get up_.)

Eren grins wide, showing his teeth and dimpling his cheek, and it completely covers whatever hesitation is curling elsewhere in his body. His eyes look darker in color, as if there’s something wicked swimming around inside them, as if whatever gods built the world had hidden another universe around his pupils.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Eren’s fingers begin to work on the laces of his workboots with a deftness that’s almost impressive for someone who can’t quite reach the lacing on his own formalwear. One boot comes off, and then the sock. The second boot comes off, and then the sock. Each press of his fingers against Levi’s ankles is fleeting and gentle. And then he lifts one foot and bows his spine, and his lips are pressed to the skin where Levi’s shin meets his ankle. Eren traces words there with his mouth. “I’m exalting you.”

To kiss one’s lowest point is to show just _how_ beneath them you are. The feet are unclean, are the extremities that walk the earth and gather the filth of the mortal world and redistribute it. It’s an archaic gesture from too long ago, and had been replaced with something simpler, something cleaner, something that allowed for distance between the royal family and the common man.

This is the oldest form of deference, and something inside Levi falls to pieces.

“Get off your knees so you can fucking kiss me,” Levi says to the top of Eren’s head—fucking _hell_ no one has ever seen the top of his head like this, have they?

Eren laughs, a low thing that crawls across the floor and fills the room with something sweet like syrup, and his clothes rustle as he levers up, pressing one palm to the mattress and tilting up his head. Levi finds himself already leaning down to meet him, despite the fact that he hasn’t made any move to stand properly.

The kiss burns, like cinnamon smoothed over with brown sugar, and electricity moves through his bones when Eren’s teeth scrape over his lower lip.

Levi’s hands aren’t wandering enough. They’re just on Eren’s shoulders, his fingers holding onto his shirt too tightly, the rest of him too tense to do anything but shift against the duvet, move closer, move _somewhere_ —

And then the kiss is over, and Eren is smiling, and his cheeks are dark from kissing. The opportunity to touch him is gone. “See?” There’s more laughter in his voice, dripping warm molasses onto the rug and the stone floor. “I can kiss you just fine from my knees.”

Levi’s own laugh comes out far more lewd than he’d meant it to as Eren lowers himself back down to rest his backside against his heels, pressing a kiss to the grass stains on each knee. These kisses—the kisses to his feet and to his knees—are entirely chaste, done with closed lips and shut eyes, and yet Levi can feel them in his abdomen, like a spring is coiled deep in his gut.

The spring coils tighter when Eren’s fingers pop the button of his jeans, when the zip is taken between his thumb and forefinger, when it’s pulled gently enough to brush against the fabric of his boxers, against the skin pressed up against them.

His breath is rattling behind his teeth.

“Lift your hips for me.” Eren is watching him from beneath his eyelashes, long and glorious and holding the light as if it were gold dust. He speaks in the way that his fingers feel, curled against the waistband of his jeans—he speaks like the shadows gathered in the corners of his bedchambers, soft and warm and low enough to raise goosebumps on his skin.

Levi lifts his hips, and his jeans slip over the jut of his hipbones, and the slope of his backside, and the fabric collects in the middle of his thighs. He can’t help but hiss as his cock stands between his legs, embarrassingly hard from thumbs imprinted on his thighs and so few kisses shared between them.

He feels like a twice-damned teenager, sitting here with his fingers now white-knuckling in the sheets, with his toes already curling, with his elbows shaking from the tension in his shoulders.

When Eren sighs, his breath is quivering. When he leans forward and opens his mouth, Levi can feel it against his cock. When the flat of his tongue goes from base to tip, Levi thinks that this is what must feel like to die.

He’s warm _everywhere_ , but it starts at his scalp and works its way downward, like a hot shower, or a heated blanket, or— _ah_ , those are Eren’s lips, tightening around him, and those are his fingers around the—

Levi groans and curls forward, his fingers creaking when he frees them from the duvet to push through Eren’s hair, soft and beautiful and messy. There’s a sound at the back of Eren’s throat that presses his tongue harder against the underside of Levi’s cock _in his mouth_ , and his eyelashes flutter against his cheek like butterfly wings, and Eren’s free hand ghosts along the inside of Levi’s left thigh.

And then the Crown Prince of the Sovereign Nation of Samudr hollows out his cheeks and begins to bob his head. _Slowly_.

It’s like a palm hits him in the center of his chest, makes him exhale sharply enough to cut his tongue, makes his body tremble from the center outward. His hands move from Eren’s hair to his cheek and back to his hair, undecided on where they would like to rest. Eren’s eyes open when Levi’s thumb grazes over his cheekbone, and he opens his mouth wide for another languid lick along Levi’s length, the tip of his tongue brushing against the curve of the head.

When Levi breathes out, he thinks he can feel flames licking at his lips, like he’s burning from the inside outward.

(It makes him think of next summer, of the gardens, of keeping secrets. Of laughter swallowed by the heavy heads of blossoms, of the way the gazebo’s floorboards would feel against his knees as he asked Eren to make sounds into his palm. Eren would be noisy, certainly. He’s noisy _now_ , and all he’s doing is—this.

Eren’s legs wouldn’t be able to stop shaking, Levi thinks. Everything would smell of summer, and of the gardens, and of the time they had together.

“ _when i’m king_ ,” Eren had said.)

Levi’s breath catches on a whine—or something like a whine. It fades against his own teeth in an exhale barely loud enough to fall from his lips, but it gives Eren’s pause, makes him hesitate before he takes Levi back into his mouth.

It gives Levi just enough time to press one thumb to Eren’s lower lip and to say, “I really need you to get off your knees and get up here.”

“Sorry.” Eren’s voice rasps against Levi’s thigh, different now than its sleep-heavy whisper. He _sounds_ like he’d had Levi’s cock almost to his throat, and Levi can feel his legs tremble at that thought. At a _lot_ of thoughts. “I’ve never done this before, so—“

“Shut up,” Levi says, and he’s pulling on Eren’s forearms, levering him back up onto his knees as he moves backwards across the duvet. “Get up here so I can _touch you_.”

“ _Oh_ ,” it’s whispered against his mouth, _traced_ against his mouth, and Levi’s kicking his jeans to the floor, and Eren’s moving forward across the mattress. The Prince’s lips are wet. His lips are wet because they’d been _wrapped around him_ , and his eyes are half-lidded, and he’s watching Levi with pupils that have swallowed his irises—with a gaze that has watched the stars and found them lacking enough to turn back to the earth for... something. For Levi.

Fucking hell.

For the next several heartbeats, there isn’t a single one where they aren’t kissing. They meet with closed lips that open against one another. They shift their heads, Eren shifts his weight on his knees, their noses brush together. One makes a sound against the other’s mouth and it’s swallowed, vibrates deep within either body. There’s the rustle of fabric and sharp inhales.

And then they’re not kissing anymore. Eren is, instead, lifting Levi’s T-shirt over his head only to toss it somewhere else that _really_ doesn’t matter. It hits the floor and is forgotten.

One of Eren’s hands presses against Levi’s back, fingers starting to splay wide as if he’s preparing to dip him again, to press him against the mattress and go right back to kissing him, and Levi’s body _reacts_ to that. His skin is already too warm, his toes have already started curling, but first—

Levi’s hands are back on Eren’s shoulders, and he says, “wait.”

It’s silent, for a split-second. Eren doesn’t breathe, for all that his eyes go wide with alarm. Levi can see the rigidity spread over him, and it’s a lot like watching a lake freeze over, from the shoreline to the center. It’s quiet enough that Levi thinks he can hear the wind make its way through the sunflowers far below them, can hear them gossip with the dirt.

“You’re not naked,” Levi continues. “And you don’t get to kiss me again until you are.”

“Oh,” Eren says again. “Right. I got—you’re distracting.” He shifts for the second time, adjusting his weight between his knees before he settles back to sit on his heels, his hands pulling away from Levi’s body to begin on the buttons of his vest. His hands are still shaking.

Levi swats Eren’s fingers away, leaning forward to start on them, moving from one to the other with practiced ease. “Your _boots_ are still on. You know that, right?”

“No,” Eren tells him, even as he begins pulling at their laces from an awkward angle. “I’d forgotten about them. Like I said, you’re _really_ distracting. I was thinking more about getting you naked, and sort of forgot that, ideally, I’d also be naked.”

Levi’s laughter tastes like pop-rocks in his mouth, glittering against his teeth like a fucking _sunrise_. Heavens _above_ , he was so— _this_ was so—“Let me get your shirt off. Then I’ll help with the boots.” He slides the vest from Eren’s shoulders, the fabric delicate beneath his fingers. And then he throws it to the side, probably wherever his shirt had ended up. “What would you do without me?”

There’s a pause, punctuated only by the sound of more buttons being undone as Levi works on Eren’s dress shirt. A low hum. And then, “I’d know a lot less about flowers, probably.” He drops his arms as Levi pushes at the dress shirt, just as soft as his vest had been, and it, too, disappears over the edge of the mattress.

Eren is... beautiful. He’s—there’s a flush, reaching from his cheeks to his throat to his chest, turning his dark skin darker. He glows, or something, like he’d been fed gold for most of his life. Astrophysics has an explanation for this, certainly. But what he looks like wouldn’t be done justice by that.

One of Eren’s boots hits the floor and Levi blinks. He’s already working on the second, and from his adjusted position, he can see the Prince straining against the front of his dress pants, too well-fitted to hide much of anything.

It reminds him that he hasn’t really touched Eren _at all_.

The mattress huffs as Levi pushes against it, moving closer toward the pillows piled upon the headboard, tossing the duvet over Eren’s head as he drops the second boot to the rug beneath the bed. There’s a huff of air, indignant, before the duvet slides back toward the mattress, failing to cling to the curve of Eren’s shoulder.

There’s still a smile pulling at Eren’s mouth, and his lips still wear the fact that they’d _definitely_ been on Levi’s cock like some sort of honor. They’re still wet, still darkly colored, still _perfect_. That fact is only emphasized further when Eren moves closer, the sunburst on his forehead throwing lamplight like a weapon, casting a small reflection on the headboard rising at Levi’s back.

They’re so close together. Fuck, they’re _so close_.

Levi drags a hand down the plane of Eren’s chest, feels his breath hitch against his fingertips, feels the way his solar plexus twitches against his palm.

“You’re still wearing pants,” Levi tells him, whispers against his cheek. A shiver works its way down Eren’s spine.

“We’ll get there when we get there,” Eren replies, and his lips find Levi’s jawline as if they’d been waiting to press kisses there. Each one is a burst of energy as Eren crowds him, and Levi’s body drops to the pillows when they move down his throat, along the tendons, pressing against his pulse.

A shaking breath. A pause. “Levi,” Eren’s voice is incense-smoke against the ceiling, thick enough to make it difficult to breathe. “Can I leave a mark on you?”

Eren’s ceiling really is artfully done. Vaulted and arched with carved cherry-stained wood, polished to a shine that gathers lamplight as if it were made for a fireplace, and Levi follows it’s lines with his eyes to make sure that his voice is even enough when he says, “ _please_.”

It’s a failure, of course. He speaks low, and his voice trembles, and he can feel Eren’s heart beat a staccato rhythm against his hand.

And then his own fingers twitch, and the only thing he can feel is the groan that rises from his mouth like _taffy,_ pulled with both hands, as Eren sucks a bruise against his pulse before he presses more fluttering kisses to Levi’s collarbone, across his chest.

 _Another_ bite, against his ribs. A matching one on the other side. Levi’s fingers in his hair, Levi _tugs_ , and it’s gentle, but—

Eren lifts his head to moan, pushing against Levi’s touch, eyes shut, and sweat is finally starting to darken the hair at Eren’s temples.

Levi’s other hand cups the side of Eren’s face only for him to press a kiss to the center of his palm—another sign of deference. A gift that someone gives to another of higher rank. A devotional.

His heart is a tire against mud, and it whines beneath his ribs.

It’s with a deep breath that Eren drops his head again, kissing _everywhere,_ , dragging his tongue here, leaving bruises there with loving teeth, whispering things that aren’t quite loud enough for Levi to catch them. He thinks that one of them might be his name, but Levi’s body is _humming_ , is vibrating too loud to hear _anything_ , and Eren’s sucking _another_ mark against his ribcage—

“What’s this?” He stops, writing a question into his skin instead of something else with his teeth. “There’s a knot on your rib.” Eren lifts his head, and there’s a war going on upon his features between two hungry things—the part of him that wants to know something, and the part of him that simply _wants_.

Levi feels time go still around him, feels the silence of potential futures coming down over his ears.

(This is an opportunity where he could tell the truth.

“ _i broke it_ ,” Levi could say here, could push his hand through Eren’s hair while he rested his head upon his chest. It would be like telling a story. “ _i was pushed from the balcony of a bordello by the owner. she thought i was there to harass her girls, but i was actually there for one of her bullshit patrons_.”

It would come out of nowhere, and Eren would be confused. “ _what the fuck were you doing at a bordello?_ ”

“ _a job_ ,” Levi would say, would draw circles on Eren’s scalp. Or maybe he’d draw squares. Or maybe he would draw hearts, to calm his nerves.

“ _for the_ theatre? _”_  It would be spoken with skepticism, would clatter against the floor with its weight. “ _theatre people perform at bordellos?_ ”

“ _no,”_ Levi would reply. “ _it was for my real job_.” There would be a pause, because Eren would be thinking. The only sound would be the autumn wind and the gears turning in the Prince’s head. And then Levi would continue, would say, “ _i killed people for a living before i worked here. before your mother_ let _me work here_.”

The silence would threaten to smother him. It would crawl down his throat and grow in size, would fill his lungs with ice chips, would push from beneath his skin like ugly growths. And then Eren would say, “ _how long have you wanted to tell me that?_ ”

“ _since i met you_ ,” Levi would say, and his throat would be too tight. _“but i couldn’t fucking figure out how to tell you that._ ”

It would kill the moment between them, but it would open the door for so many more. They’d have _everything_ , and there would be no more secrets. It would be poetic, in a way—it would be as if he were showing Eren secret passageways and corridors into the pieces of him he’d hated to think about, into the parts of him that no one else had seen before. Eren would shift against him, would maybe pull the duvet over them both.

“ _so tell me about it now_ ,” he’d say, and his voice would move like silk. “ _i’m listening_.”)

Eren’s thigh shifts against Levi’s lower body, and it arcs up his spine with too much force.

He can’t do that. There’s no—he can’t do that now. He can tell him in the morning, when their limbs are heavy with the night they’d had, when Eren is half-asleep and serene, when the sun is rising and the world is too bathed in light to have anything ugly in it. It would go _exactly_ like that—it would move from Levi’s mouth to Eren’s ears, and then all would be right with the world.

But not tonight.

“I broke it on stage,” Levi tells him, hissing when Eren’s thigh moves for the second time, rocking his body against it, probably smearing the fabric of his dress pants. But surely Eren has plenty, or he would’ve removed them already. “There was supposed to be something beneath me when I fell from a balcony, but there wasn’t. Fractured an arm and broke a rib.”

Eren makes a displeased sound, pressing another kiss to where his mouth had been before. It’s gentler than the last one, and even _that_ kiss would’ve made spun sugar proud, but this is... tender. Soft. _Breakable_ and fluttering.

“I’ll be careful there,” Eren says, as soft as his kiss had been.

And then he proceeds further down Levi’s body, leaving and endless stream of kisses behind him, as if there isn’t a piece of his body that will escape the Prince’s attention. It makes him squirm against the sheets, makes him swear at the airy slopes of the ceiling, makes his whole body feel like it’s on the verge of bursting into _light_.

A bruise on each thigh, a matching pair. And then, whispered against the skin there, “I love you.”

Levi swallows because breathing is impossible. “I love _you_. Now could you—I’m getting really—you’re _still_ wearing pants.”

Eren _laughs_. He loves it when Eren laughs. It plays between the rafters, pressing against the vaulted arch of the ceiling, toys between the air vents and the ceiling fans. And he says, “right, I am. I—sorry. If you could reach into the bedside table? I’ll solve the pants problem. There should be... a bottle in there. Uh.”

Levi pushes himself up onto his elbows to meet Eren’s eyes as he rises from between his legs, and he can feel his own eyebrows arching. The color that had spread across Eren’s chest has collected almost entirely in his cheeks, but he doesn’t drop his gaze from where Levi holds it, his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his own pants.

“What?” Eren shifts on his knees, nervous.

“Your bedside table?”

“I—“ The color in his face deepens, moves back down his throat. It’s _gorgeous_. “I’ve never—before. I’ve never done this before, so I needed to figure out what I was—I looked stuff up online, and I had to get _that_ , because I couldn’t send anyone—I was _trying_ to be _prepared_. Prepared! Just... in case.”

Love feels like this. Period. There’s no colon there, no addendum. It feels just like this moment, forever. It feels like the way Eren looks, like the flush on his face. It feels like the steadiness of his attention and the set of his jaw and the way he squares his shoulders. It feels like the laughter that’s bubbling against his tongue, and it feels like _this_. Like kisses and too-soft duvets and perfect lighting and vaulted-fucking- _ceilings_.

Feels like the way Eren looks at him. Like the way Levi hopes he looks at _Eren_.

“Get _out_ of your pants,” Levi says, and his voice feels like it might break. “I’ll get your fucking ‘ _bottle_.’”

The wood drawer is smooth beneath Levi’s hand and makes no sound when he opens it. He can hear the rustle-whisper-sigh of Eren’s pants against the sheets as he removes them, can hear the rattle of a belt as they fall to the floor. The bottle of lube is _exactly_ where Eren had said it would be, though he’d said nothing about the fact it was glass, and he shuts the drawer with just as little sound as he’d opened it.

Eren is back between his legs when Levi turns around and drops the bottle into his palm.

“That looks expensive,” Levi tells him, dropping back onto the pillows. “The bottle.”

Eren’s eyes glitter, and the cut of his jaw is something that people would’ve written poems about in older eras. “I wanted to do this right.” Another pause, this one longer. And then, “there are also... condoms. In the drawer beneath it. Um. I’ve never—before. So—but I know that’s not the only—“

Levi’s chest feels tight, pressed down against the mattress, almost heavy enough to hit the floor.

“We don’t need one,” he says. “But I can’t fucking believe you asked.”

The Prince ducks his head as if he’d been caught doing something silly, but there’s a smile flirting with the line of his mouth, as he pulls the lid off the bottle, palming it in his right hand.

It smells a little like orange blossoms when he pours some onto his fingers, rubbing his thumb through the gel to warm it. Or... no. That’s vanilla? Or—something. It’s faint, almost negligible, but it makes it easier to relax his thighs, makes it easier to breathe as Eren drops his hand between them, moving to press his fingers between the cheeks of his backside.

There’s a frown hanging from Eren’s face, and it creates another furrow between his eyebrows, too far out of reach for Levi to smooth over with his own fingers. And so he says, “you know, your staff is going to know that you did some _very_ interesting things in your bed come morning.”

“What?” Eren pauses, his shoulders drooping as if he’d forgotten that they were supposed to be tense. “Oh. No. Not really. My sheets haven’t been—I _told_ you I was trying shit out. But I meant, like, on _myself_ , so—I mean, they won’t _know_ I was having—“ The color is back and touching his ears, and the break between his eyebrows is gone.

“Good to know.” Levi lifts his hips, pressing against Eren’s fingers. “For future reference, I mean. For when I come back.”

Eren exhales as if he’d been punched and his eyes widen. Something flits across his face and is gone before Levi has a chance to name it. “For next time,” Eren repeats, sighing from his nose. “You’re sure this is okay? The—me, and my fingers—are you...”

“Eren.” There’s a look he gets when Levi says his name, but it’s never been quite like that before. It might be the timbre of it, or the Levi’s voice feels when it rises from his throat, or the way he’s squirming against Eren’s fingers. But it makes Eren swallow, makes his throat bob, brings his eyes to Levi’s face with absolute focus. “ _Please_ stop making me wait.”

The shudder that moves through Eren’s body vibrates the mattress under his knees, but the hesitation moves from the front seat to the back as the Prince pushes one finger inside him, leaning forward to press a kiss to Levi’s nose, to his forehead, to his cheeks.

It stings, in the way that too-cold rain does, or stitches do, and it feels _weird_ in a way that’s difficult to describe in... _polite_ language. But it’s forgettable. _All_ pain is forgettable. Enough, at any rate, that when Eren tries to kiss his cheek for the second time, Levi catches his mouth in a kiss that sets fire to the room around them. It’s all unintelligible murmurs and hints of teeth, and Levi can’t believe this is happening.

But it is happening, and there’s a second finger, and it stings just like the first.

Another kiss, wet and perfect, and the fingers move. _Weird_. Another kiss, _longer_ , Levi sucks on Eren’s tongue and swallows the sounds he makes. They’re still moving, _slowly_ , and Levi sucks again, just as slow. He’s about to bite down, maybe, to ask for another one, to move this forward because there will _never_ be enough of them together, and all Levi wants is _more_ and—

 _Oh_.

Levi’s blood is on fire.

He lets go of Eren’s mouth to _groan_ , to push himself down on the fingers inside him. Shifts them, pushes _again_ , and—

“Holy _shit_ ,” Levi whispers. “Holy shit, I need you to—hit that.”

Eren is watching him. Eren is watching him, and Levi is almost certain that his pupils could swallow them both, could swallow _everything_ , could—he’s moving again. His fingers are—

 _Yes_.

“Another finger?” It’s asked to his hairline where Eren won’t stop pressing kisses, down his face, the shell of his ear. His hand has stopped moving. “Three were recommended, and I want to see if I can—“

“Another one.” Levi’s voice doesn’t sound like his own, and for the first time in his life, it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. This Levi is one that he doesn’t know, one that hadn’t existed before he’d met Eren. This one is—this Levi is greedy, is ready to be touched, has a voice that is meant only for this, for Eren’s ears, for the sheets and the curtains and the—“ _Please_.”

A third, and it stretches, but Eren doesn’t stop the slow rhythm of his hand, twisting his wrist just so as he pushes, and—

There’s a sunburst on the back of Levi’s eyelids, his spine arching against pillows that are probably imported from _somewhere_ , that are nice and supportive and do _wonders_ for muffling the high-pitched _bullshit_ keen that comes out of Levi’s mouth just then.

“Okay, it’s—enough.” Levi’s _gasping_. He’s gasping and his arm is around Eren’s shoulders. “Enough fingers. Time for the main event, or there won’t _be_ a main event, and I’ll—die. This’ll kill me.” A pause, because _Eren_ is pausing, because his eyebrows are about to furrow _again_. “ _Please._ Eren. Please. Fucking— _pretty_ please.”

Levi doesn’t have to ask again.

Eren’s eyes are closed when he slicks up his own cock, and his shoulders are trembling as he shifts on his knees. He opens them as he guides himself to Levi’s slightly lifted hips, and then everything is _stretch_ and _warmth_ and _ceiling_.

The rafters creak above them both at the sound Eren buries in his own chest. His body moves back to hover over Levi, one hand braced against the mattress, his fingers tucked beneath one pillow. Levi’s fingers find the hair at the back of Eren’s neck and find it damp.

Both of them are shaking, a little.

“I love you,” Eren says, keeping his body perfectly still. His bicep quivers as he keeps his weight held there.

“I love _you_ ,” Levi replies, and his voice isn’t near as even.

“No.” Eren shifts, moving one of Levi’s legs forward, bending it to press the knee closer to Levi’s own chest. “You’re not understanding me. I _love_ you. You’re so beautiful, and so smart, and so funny, and so _you_ , I love you, and I—I want to be with you, and give you all the shit I—that I know you should...” He trails off, and swallows. And then he begins to move, a little. “I love you. I love you so—so _fucking_ much that I...”

Another exhale, and it shakes Eren’s body as the movement of his hips finds traction, and Levi can already feel something inside his chest pull tight—can feel it in the tautness of his skin.

“I—I always think of our future,” Eren says, and his spine is bowed in the way a Regent’s never should be, as if this is a place of prayer and not a fucking bedroom in the topmost section of the palace. “I daydream about it like a fucking—like a _grade_ schooler, writing in my diary about—who gets what name, and—I love you.”

Levi _is_ making sounds. Soft _ah-ah-ahs_ , because Eren’s hips are _just_ shy of incredible, because he’s making sure he’s _just_ short of where he ought to be aiming for. He wishes instead that they were words, that there was something far more coherent that he could say that would be appropriate.

No. That’s not right. That would be more than appropriate. That would be poignant and meaningful. That would be _exactly_ what needed to be said at _exactly_ this moment, and Eren would smile that soft, beautiful, _unreal_ smile, and it would make his whole body go liquid, and he would lean close and—

 _There_. Fucking _shit_ , fucking _gods-damned_ bullshit, fucking _yes_ —

Levi sees the sunburst on Eren’s forehead, sees it above him as he shifts his own hips to meet the _perfect_ , absolutely _phenomenal_ thrusts. And he pushes himself onto his elbows, watches Eren’s eyes go wide, sees the details on his eyelashes—and he presses their foreheads together, feels the sunburst just between his eyes.

He’s desperate, you see. To reach the sun. To touch the sun and be consumed by it. To follow its path across the sky and wait ‘til morning when it rises again, calling his name with a fucking _dimpled cheek_ and beautiful teeth and scattered hair, and—

“I’m the—“ His voice _definitely_ breaks, there. Fuck, he thinks his eyes are watering. “I’m the sunflower. In all my—the flower who follows the—this sounds _so fucking stupid_ , but I—I would—anywhere. For you, I would go—I would be anywhere. _Go_ anywhere. I would—to be with you. I fucking _love you_ , holy shit, I love you, _holy_ —“

His words fall into pieces and he falls backwards, and he’s fucking _crying_ , and Eren is perfect, this is perfect, he’s _so close_ and his nerves are on _fire!_

( _you make me feel holy_ , Levi wants to say. _like the gods looked at me and said, ‘you were meant to be ordained by love.’ or something like that. a priest would know it better._ )

Levi comes with a shout that would have scared him shitless if he didn’t know that the Prince’s chambers were essentially a military bunker. His toes curl enough to crack and his fingernails are digging into Eren’s shoulder in a way that has to _hurt_ , and yet the only thing Levi can hear is what sounds just a little bit like a sob as Eren follows him, his body going rigid as it spends itself.

There are moments, then, that Levi doesn’t remember. But when he comes back into himself, his soul feeling like it’s been cleaned of _something_ , Eren is beside him, and neither of their thighs are caked with—anything. It smells like orange blossoms, and vanilla, and sweat.

There’s gravel in Levi’s throat when he says, “I want to go to your party.”

Eren stirs beside him, concern twisting his features into something just as beautiful as always, and he reaches across the short distance between them to drag a finger through a tearstain upon Levi’s cheek. “Oh yeah?” A swallow, and then, “are you okay?”

“Yeah, I want to go to your party.” Eren’s fingertips are warm, and the calluses on them somehow make his touch softer. “And yeah, I’m okay. That was just really good. And I really fucking love you. I’ve never cried like that before.”

The bedclothes flutter around them as Eren moves closer, their foreheads coming together for the second time. “You sure you’re okay?”

“ _Super_ okay. Very okay.” Levi brushes their noses, can feel the sensation all the way down to the soles of his feet. “Think you’ll miss dancing with me, when you have all those blueblooded people around you in a couple days?”

Eren laughs—sunflowers at nighttime, whispering against one another. “That’s the dumbest fucking question. Every dance I have, I’ll be thinking of you.”

Levi scoffs, stealing a kiss that Eren’s laughter had left him open enough to give, and he can’t believe this has happened to him. He can’t believe this can happen to him again. He can’t fucking _believe_ this.

“So,” Eren says close to his ear, his voice alive with mischief, “did you know that my shower is way too big for one person? Like, ridiculously big. With fancy plumbing and all that. Nice tile. A _bench_.” He nuzzles the side of Levi’s face, and he can feel Eren’s eyelashes kiss his temple. “Do you want to see?”

The pillow doesn’t quite swallow Levi’s words when he replies, “you’re about to make me feel _really_ old, aren’t you, kid?”

Eren’s laughter is louder this time, and he rolls out of bed, his footsteps purposefully loud against the stairs as he takes them.

One heartbeat passes. Two.

And Levi is out of bed, following after him, his laughter rubbing what’s left of his throat raw.

Whatever it was that had been so important to say eludes him. After all, what could mean more than ‘ _I love you’_ when Eren casts a look like _that_ over his shoulder?

(The dawn will be fresh, come morning, still new and undisturbed by Guards or noise or palace bustle. Levi would’ve otherwise been up earlier, had he been in his own dormitory. But he hadn’t been, and the daylight will be crawling across the floor below the loft where they’d slept the night before. There will be time, yet, for them to spend together, even if it won’t ever be _enough_.

The bedclothes will sigh as Eren crawls into Levi’s lap, his hair having been adored by sleep and by Levi’s own fingers, and he will say, “ _we don’t have to be anywhere yet, right?_ ” There will be bruises in places that are _just_ within the boundaries set by clothes, scattered along Eren’s collarbones and his shoulders. But only just.

Levi will already be craving this, will already be starving for the touches he can give, and receive, and _bask_ in. Eren will already be sliding Levi’s length between the cheeks of his backside, will rock forward, and Levi’s fingers will begin their dance up Eren’s thighs without consulting the rest of him. And by the time the rest of him catches up, there won’t be any sort of protest on his mind.

But into the early-morning blur of color and quiet, Levi will ask, “ _what’re you doing?_ ” His voice will shake a little with what Eren will be offering him.

“ _giving myself_ ,” Eren will reply, pressing kisses like flower petals to Levi’s face. He will speak as if sleep is still clinging to him. “ _i want to, uh, feel you. like that.”_

It will make Levi’s voice tremble, will make it difficult to breathe. It will bring to mind all the sensations of the night before.

But mostly it will make him realize just how much Eren had given of himself before any of _this_ had started. Mostly, it will make him realize how much Levi wants to give in return.

Mostly, it will make him realize how much more he will still want to give him, for as long as he is able.

“ _okay_ ,” Levi will tell him, will kiss Eren’s tattoo of rank, will kiss his cheek, will lift one of his hands to kiss his palm. “ _i can do that_.”

The dawn will be jealous. The two of them will feel _alive_.)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stillness hits the dancefloor with all the weight of a summer storm, ending just as suddenly as it had started, and the index and middle finger of the Queen Regent’s right hand are pressed to Eren’s throat, her left pressed to the crook of her own elbow, while Eren’s fingers are curled around her wrist. It’s a scene from a fable that Levi had never retained over his decade of royal service, though Isabel had told it to him more times than he’d asked. 
> 
> The Queen drops her arms when silence settles back over the ballroom, dropping into a curtsy modest enough for a Regent but deep enough to show gratitude—and the marble beneath Levi’s feet vibrates with applause. Nobles ten paces in front of him chatter back and forth in languages he doesn’t know, but some words are familiar, if only because of the context. 
> 
> _Prince. Regent. Beautiful._
> 
> Levi wants to agree, can feel the force of it climbing onto his tongue, scraping the insides of his cheeks.
> 
> When he looks back toward the center of the ballroom, he finds Eren’s eyes on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> steeples fingers. i want you all to know that i love eren jaeger very much. happy birthday and happy season two, everyone!

(Levi had known it was a dream the moment that Eren had stepped from the shadows.

“ _who are you?_ ” he’d said—only this time he’d been taller, older, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand, his hair mussed from a too-deep sleep. Levi had known the sleepclothes he’d been wearing—a T-shirt from his university and the gray sweatpants—just like he’d known the clothes the Prince had worn when he’d been disturbed from sleep ten years earlier. There had been birds on them.

“ _it’s me_ ,” Levi had said with the voice of the man he’d become, had taken one step closer and offered out his hand. The corridor was silent around them, the wall sconces cutting through the shadows so little that their light was almost negligible. “ _i couldn’t sleep_.”

His knife had been a heavy weight inside his boot, just like the lie that he’d just told.

Levi’s clothes had been the same as those from his memory—dark and soft, his sap-soled boots silent against the stone floor. These had been the clothes he’d killed in countless times, their color too deep to stain with blood. Eren’s fingers had brushed against the hem of Levi’s sleeve as he’d taken his hand, hesitating not-at-all as he’d shifted his grip there, choosing instead to lace their fingers. His hand had been warm, his grip gentle, and Levi had pulled him close.

He’d smelled of sunflowers and winter, of late night coffee and garden chatter. Levi could feel his lips against his cheek, curling upward in a smile. “ _want to go for a walk, or something?_ ” Eren had said, his nose brushing against Levi’s temple.

“ _isn’t it past your curfew?_ ” Levi had asked, had turned his head for a kiss.

“ _isn’t it past_ yours?” Eren had _laughed_ , had let it brighten his face and reveal his teeth—and then his body had gone limp, just a little, had sagged against Levi’s in the boneless way that bodies do when life leaves them sooner than it had been supposed to.

Levi hadn’t been able to breathe.

As Levi’s arms wrapped around his torso to keep him upright, he’d felt blood on his hands. There had been a knife in Eren’s back, perfectly placed between his ribs to cut through the muscle there, pushed in at an upward angle to hit the heart. The Prince had still been breathing as his fingers curled in Levi’s shirt, but it had sounded wet, had sounded like boiling water, and Levi’s knife was still in his boot. It hadn’t made any sense—

“ _i told you_ ,” the sound of metal against stone, of the rattle of rock inside a glass jar, “ _i wanted you to end an empire, not fuck it into compliance_.” The shadows around them had quivered, and Eren had said his name. “ _but i guess it’s better this way, isn’t it, boy? you didn’t have to kill him—all you had to do was make it easier_.”

Levi had woken up gasping. Eren had stirred beside him.)

There are five entryways into the ballroom.

Eight stained-glass windows are set high into the wall, too far to reach from the ground, and all of them are triple-paned. There are two wide guest-doorways with two palace guards positioned beside each one, and at least three staff entrances, beside which stand two members of the Prince’s Guard each.

Levi hates that he knows that. He hates that he notices that the only armed guards in attendance are those of Eren’s retinue, hates that he knows that this _exact_ spot has the most unobscured view of the room.

He shouldn’t’ve come here. There are too many fucking people, and his hands are clammy, his fingertips going numb, and he wasn’t made for this. He should’ve told Eren that they could meet afterward, that Levi could help him out of his laced-up clothing, that he could do it slowly and with an effort. He shouldn’t fucking _be_ here, and yet—

The ballroom goes still the moment the royal family is announced by the herald. Levi’s never been in a room this quiet filled with so many people, and he’s been to enough functions like this that he knows a little of what goes on here. Usually there’s gossip, one perfectly coifed hairstyle leaning close to speak to another, perfumes and colognes carrying messages too loud for whispers. But the herald’s voice is uninterrupted—not by the quiet murmur of people angling for a better view, nor the soft music of jewelry shifting against skin.

The only sound that scrapes against the ceiling, after the echo of the herald’s announcement dies against the brightly colored marble beneath their feet, is the opening of the door that leads to the Sunlit Hall itself—where the Regent and her Consort take audiences. Where the floor is decorated like a starscape, cold and distant and divinely constructed.   

And the Prince is _breathtaking_ , enough that all of Levi’s second-guesses turn to dust between his fingers.

He’s almost fucking _gliding_ at the King Consort’s heels, his eyes focused on the back of his father’s head as the royal family makes their way across the raised pathway. Even from this far away, even from across an entire _ballroom_ , Levi thinks he can see Eren’s eyelashes, stretching into forever when he blinks. He can trace the column of Eren’s throat with his eyes, can follow the shift of his weight between his feet when the procession stops and reorients, can admire the curve of his cheek as he settles at the Queen Regent’s right hand side, his hands folded just below his abdomen.

There’s something funny about this in a way that makes Levi’s mouth dry. After all, he’s the only one in this room that knows that there are bruises just beneath the collar of Eren’s outermost shirt—a weird, modern crossbreed between a tailored doublet and some humane version of a corset, laced tightly in the back.

He’d watched Eren pull on the undershirt this morning, had seen the way that the fabric covered marks that Levi’s mouth had left behind.

“Thank you for spending this evening with us.” The Queen Regent’s voice has always sounded like a weapon, but Levi’s never heard this version of it before—a pipe organ in the distance, indicating a celebration of something, waiting to shift into the minor key at a moment’s notice. Power like that, Levi supposes, is something a lot of rulers could envy. “It’s our pleasure to welcome you to the palace to celebrate the coming winter, and the year’s harvest, and the triumph of the daylight even as our nights grow longer.”

It’s a delicate reference to her nation’s traditions—festivals that celebrate the triumphs and tribulations of ancient gods, the acknowledgement of the change in seasons that no longer really affect harvests and exports, the subtle reminder that it’s the hospitality of Samudr that has them standing here. Her guests murmur, some of them raising wine glasses in the direction of the pathway, and Levi thinks he can see a smile shift onto her lips, easing onto her face.

“It’s also our honor to get right to the party,” the Regent says, and laughter ripples across the ballroom from wall to wall. But it doesn’t swallow her words when she continues, “but first we greet the space between seasons with a brief demonstration of our beloved history.” Rose-gold bangles glitter on her wrist as he lifts one hand to gesture to Eren, still poised perfectly beside her. The King Consort doesn’t turn his head.

Eren bows only slightly, unlacing his fingers as he does so, and the Queen Regent sweeps the fabric of her dress in a circle as she descends the stairs, the deep red-orange fabric wrapped around her shoulder shimmering with stitched gold.

The audience in front of the pathway backs up with no help from the palace guards stationed in a line beside the stairs, their own red-orange leather catching fire in the light dripping from the chandeliers like liquid. The Queen Regent’s regal colors look almost too-warm beside the Prince’s white-gold and seafoam green, and yet as they stand across from one another on the polished stone of the dancefloor, there’s a complement between them.

Their hands rise to take position, the Crown Prince mirroring the Regent, and their bodies shift into a stance that Levi’s never seen before. This moment is one that he’d only ever heard of, that Isabel had told him stories about from past festivals just like this one. The year before, it had been the Regent and her Consort, just like it had been the year before that one, and the year before that, and the year before _that_.

This year is different. Symbolic. A show of the kingdom’s heir.

It’s a little bit like Eren’s first day as the Crown Prince, in some ways.

(It had been his twelfth birthday, the year he’d picked the colors that would be his during his Regency, and he’d stood at his mother’s right-hand side, while the Consort had been at her left. The ceremony had been held in the Sunlit Hall, while other leaders from other nations had congratulated the family on their beautiful boy.

Allegedly, the entire affair had been sweet. Beautiful. A celebration of the nation’s future. The palace staff had been unable to stop gossiping about it for weeks afterward.

But Levi had been in the gardens for that, and so had no gossip to share.)

The ballroom smells of rose petals, the columns and the window-ledges decorated with and endless number of flowers, each a different color, a different shape. The air is thick around his shoulders, and it’s absolutely still.

And then the music begins.

It’s all string instruments and tambourines as Eren and the Regent drop their arms at the same time, sliding into steps that reflect each other perfectly. _Everything_ about their pacing is fluid—the way their fingers curl as they slip past one another, the rotation of their hips as they ease into footwork that Levi knows is happening only because of the color in Eren’s cheeks, the flutter of the Regent’s dress as she spins beautifully enough to almost pull down the shawl draped over her hair.

Watching Eren dance isn’t anything like watching him fight.

He’s still graceful, _obviously_. And the intensity carving out the line of his jaw is the same. But even though there are heartbeats where it looks like the Regent’s fingernails will dig furrows into the Prince’s cheek, and there are steps that make it seem as if Eren’s elbow is going to end up in his mother’s gut, none of the collisions ever come. It’s just a mother, and a son, and a dance that tells a story about not-yet-forgotten gods.

It’s as if there’s something softer about the way his body moves when he’s like this. Maybe he’d been too busy watching Eren’s face to notice, the first time. Watching his eyes, his lips, the flash of his teeth, the shifting of his hair above his eyebrows, and the sun etched in gold between them.

Or—no. It’s not softness. It’s like watching a thunderstorm from a distance, or seeing a river loop around a mountainside before it turns into a waterfall. It’s like seeing wind push snow from a precipice. It’s like knowing that the universe is moving through his body.

Something meaningful like that.

Eren turns on the toe of one boot, the Regent compensates by twirling in a counter rotation, the motion enough to give a glimpse of her braided hair behind her neck, still mostly hidden by the shawl. The way they move is effortless, and the chandeliers are turning Eren’s hair into threads of precious metals, and the poor angle Levi has from here does absolutely nothing to dim the glow of his basically-miraculous eyes.

(“ _so dance with me now_ ,” Eren had said, and his lips had curved upward into a smile, and his hand had been warm as Levi had taken it. He’d been unable to refuse.

If he were to breathe just then, he’s sure he would taste the gardens weaving between his teeth.)

Stillness hits the dancefloor with all the weight of a summer storm, ending just as suddenly as it had started, and the index and middle finger of the Queen Regent’s right hand are pressed to Eren’s throat, her left pressed to the crook of her own elbow, while Eren’s fingers are curled around her wrist. It’s a scene from a fable that Levi had never retained over his decade of royal service, though Isabel had told it to him more times than he’d asked.

The Queen drops her arms when silence settles back over the ballroom, dropping into a curtsy modest enough for a Regent but deep enough to show gratitude—and the marble beneath Levi’s feet vibrates with applause. Nobles ten paces in front of him chatter back and forth in languages he doesn’t know, but some words are familiar, if only because of the context.

 _Prince_. _Regent. Beautiful_.

Levi wants to agree, can feel the force of it climbing onto his tongue, scraping the insides of his cheeks.

When he looks back toward the center of the ballroom, he finds Eren’s eyes on him.

His cheeks are dark with the runaround he’d done on the dancefloor and his eyes are holding the lamplight in pinpricks, stars peeking through some unearthly, interstellar green as they rotate around the edges of his pupils. His body shifts, his weight moving between his feet as he lifts one hand to rest his fingers against his lips, and Levi can feel the atmosphere roll around his ears, can feel it pushing against his sinuses like too much water.

The Queen Regent’s final speech sounds as if it’s coming from far away—or from above the waterline. “And with that, we officially declare the festivities initiated.”

People begin to move around him, passing through the space between himself and the Prince, and the music that rises from the orchestral alcove is softer than the country’s traditional pieces—it’s less percussive, slightly slower, and feels more like a breeze. But all of these things are surprisingly inconsequential, fading into background noise and peripheral color.

Eren is smiling behind his knuckles. Levi can see it in the wrinkled skin beside his eyes, can almost catch a glimpse of his teeth, and it _lingers_ on his face, lights it up from the inside, and when Levi breathes he can smell the remnants of summer beneath the perfume of the roses. Underneath everything else, there’s the sting of sawdust, the grind of dust in his teeth, the prickling of Eren’s attention beneath his skin.

This look feels more dangerous than the one they’d shared in the training yard. It feels like something Levi could lean into, like something he’s _already_ leaned into, like a palm against his cheek.

Summer into autumn. Sawdust to honeysuckle to cosmos to roses. Sunflower fields to gardens to bedrooms. Whispers to laughter to kissing to dancing to—this.

The moment doesn’t shatter when Eren’s eyes are pulled elsewhere, it simply stretches. It sticks to Levi’s skin like dewdrops, presses against his chest hard enough to make his ribs creak with its weight. It’s a promise of fleeting glances, _all fucking night_ , and it’s a promise of other things. Of a future. Of ballrooms and polished dancefloors and kisses that taste like sunflowers.

(“ _when i’m king, i’ll have to take breaks just to kiss you_.”

The sound of tires against mud, scrambling for purchase and finding none.)

Levi takes a breath and indulges in the taste of roses. It doesn’t steady the tremor in his pulse.

“So which one’s yours?” A questioned dipped in dark chocolate drags itself across the wall behind him, curling against the grout. There’s no twinkling clatter of jewelry accompanying it—but there is the whisper of a knife in a leather sheath, and Levi can feel his teeth grinding together even as he turns his head to glance beside him.

While he’s never met her personally, he’s heard a great deal about Ymir of Yvini, the beloved bodyguard-turned-wife of Her Majesty Historia Reiss . He’s heard about her freckles and her height, and he’s heard about the deep color of her skin that contrasts in some sort of elegant way with the lavender-and-rose colors of her wife’s royal house. He’s heard about her age, and can see the laughter lines beside her lips.

The only paint on her face are kohl-lines, a relic of the country she’d come from, probably, though no one really knew for sure—and way she looks at him makes his skin feel like it’s covered in kindling. If he entertains that thought enough, he can almost smell smoke, can almost feel it stinging the inside of his nose.

“Pardon?” Levi shifts his weight to his right foot, keeping his arms crossed over his chest. He returns her once-over with one of his own.

“Which one is yours?” She takes the spot beside him against the wall, mirroring his posture by leaning her spine against it and crossing her arms just beneath her sternum. And then she nods toward the dancefloor, dragging Levi’s attention back to the sea of people—and the Prince. “Mine is the small blonde one. With the necklace.”

(Historia Reiss had been ten years old when Levi had last seen her, and it had been nothing more than a glance through a window. She’d been just as fair-haired and her eyes had been just as bright, and she hadn’t so much as spared him a heartbeat’s-worth of attention.

“ _beautiful girl you have there,_ ” Kenny had said, rattling his voice around in a glass jar, sounding for all the world like every cigarette he’d ever dragged from.

“ _looks like a queen,_ ” Rod Reiss had replied, all metal-on-stone, a blade cutting through pavement, “ _doesn’t she?_ ”)

Historia’s hands are tiny where they fit in Eren’s, but her pacing is perfect as they sweep across the dancefloor, and the amethyst at her throat holds onto the lamplight, bouncing it between facets as her throat bobs when she swallows. But Eren isn’t looking at the stone on her necklace or the cut of her dress or the size of her hands—he’s leaning down to say something to her, his mouth moving too quickly to follow and then shifting out of view entirely.

On their next loop through  _whatever_  steps these are, Eren’s eyes flicker toward Levi’s face for half-a-breath. It feels like a kiss against his temple.

“Oh,” Ymir’s jacket rustles as she adjusts her position against the wall, “I see. So  _you’re_  the gardener.” The violins from the far corner of the ballroom fill the silence in a way that Levi refuses to. “What’s a gardener doing at a fancy party? Fuck knows I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.”

Levi almost snorts, and he can see why Eren takes a shine to this couple so much. He and Ymir are similar, a little.

“If I didn’t come, how would I know if my roses were a hit?” His words chill the inside of his mouth when he says them, but they’re not icy enough to be a breach of protocol—and even if they were, he’s not entirely sure that Ymir would report him anyway. “I’d miss out on all the compliments that people would absolutely be showering me with if the royal family wasn’t hogging all the attention.”

Ymir laughs only once, and it’s soft, but it smoothes out the sharp edges of her cheeks, soothing the frozen rim of her irises. “Hogging the attention at their own shindig. Sure.” She hums, and her eyes follow Historia’s movement across the floor, catching the thrown looks and the  almost-hidden fluttering of fingers in a wave. “They  _are_  very nice roses. Diverse. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many international roses in one place.”

Someone laughs too-loudly across the room, pressing down on the strings and the soft clatter of champagne glasses, but the dancing goes uninterrupted. “It took weeks to process the order and days to keep them alive, thanks for noticing.”

This laugh is louder only barely, but it lasts longer, fading into the rhythm of people’s feet along the marble of the floor. “Sure thing, Mr. Gardner.” The pause Ymir leaves between them is longer, too, and there’s no hum to fill it. “It’s kind of funny, though. You don’t really  _look_  like a gardener over here. Is it a new thing the Prince’s Guard has taken up? Plants on weekends, or…?”

Levi doesn’t look away from Eren’s face. One of his cheeks is dimpling as he smiles, tilting his head so that Historia can better reach his ear for some comment or another.

“Nope,” he says. “I’m just a gardener. But the vote of confidence is inspiring.”

Something in Ymir’s chest rumbles, and it’s not a hum. It reminds him of something else—of a tree falling against too-damp earth beneath the force of an ice-melt river. The sweat that had been drying on Levi’s palms starts back up again, numbing the heels of his hands.

“Eren talks about you, apparently,” Ymir says, rolling her words between her fingers like pearls. “To Historia, I mean. Which means I know you tangentially. You don’t have to act like you’re sucking a ripe lemon.” Her voice lowers to a whisper, and this time there’s something conspiratorial in the curse of her lips. The smell of wisteria rises from her collarbones, swatting aside the soft sighs of the roses. “I’m not going to  _tattle_. And no one would believe me anyway!”

Her freckles are closer like this, and when he’s not watching the line of Eren’s shoulders or the curve of his mouth or the shape of his throat, it’s easier to quiet the longing to embarrass himself by moving across the dancefloor in front of too many people. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to look Historia’s wife in the face when she already  _thinks_  she knows what she’s talking about.

Maybe he’d just been getting too comfortable as a gardener. Maybe he’d just forgotten, for too many moments, all the things he’d been trying to hide.

“Are you saying that I’m not pretty enough to get the attention of His Highness?” Levi asks, and his voice is perfectly even, dropped onto the marble to rest beside Ymir’s boots.

Laughter like wooden chimes, round and warm. Leftover suspicion falls from her shoulders in the shape of feathers. “I don’t know his type, so I can’t honestly be sure. When I met the kid, I was sure that he didn’t  _have_  a type, just spent his time gathering dust by throwing around his Guards or reading books or whatever it is he does.” The kohl beside her eyes doesn’t smear when she rubs at it, clearing away an eyelash that had caught itself there. “But when he came to the—to our wedding, he looked so… I don’t know. It’s complicated. It was the first time I’d ever seen him  _chatty_ , so—“

She stops, then, and she turns her head toward the herd of people mingling at the edges of the dancefloor, watching as Historia appears from around some ruffled skirts. Her hair is still perfectly placed, strands of gold curling at her temples, and her cheeks are pink with the effort of moving across the ballroom for however many songs had passed.

Levi had lost track of some of the time.

Ymir is already moving away from the wall when Levi looks back for her, already sweeping Historia into a wide turn that fans her skirt, hiding the toes of her shoes. Historia laughs, swatting at Ymir’s shoulder, and it’s only when she’s got her feet on the ground again that she begins to address them both.

“You looked like you were having fun over here.” When she speaks, it’s just this side of breathless, and her accent strings her sentence together with lines of caramel. “I thought that I’d cut in.” Her hand comes up to tap Ymir’s elbow, and the freckles on her face almost disappear beneath the softness there. Ymir’s eyes are half-lidded and there’s a smile on her lips and Levi can feel something crawling up his throat that burns a lot like jealousy.

They’re here, in front of an entire fucking royal festival, filled with noble blood and expensive clothes, and they can look at each other that way. The whispers fall short of whatever space they had made for themselves, and the cutting glances are dulled before they can even get close to bare skin. He’s sure that if they’d wanted to, they could kiss where they’re standing, and there would be gossip tomorrow, and it wouldn’t bother them in the least.

Levi hadn’t thought that he’d ever want something like that this badly. He hadn’t thought that he’d taste it like this, that it would curl his tongue like this, that it would be  _bitter_  like this.

For the second time in his life, Levi thinks this must be what it’s like to know he’s starving.

 Historia keeps speaking, but this time her eyes aren’t on him at all. “Eren says that he wants to see  _you_  on the dancefloor for a single dance before you can dance with me. He says that you’ll be unstoppable once you get your way, and he hasn’t seen you since the wedding.”

“High Highness deigns to tell  _me_  when I can and can’t dance with my own  _wife?_ ” Ymir’s expression flickers between aghast and amused, and the kohl around her eyes bends into the delicate crow’s feet at the corners. “This is an outrage.”

Historia shrugs, her lips rolled over her teeth to push back the laughter that’s coloring the skin of her ears. “It’s his country. Do you want to dance with me or not?”

Ymir sighs loudly enough that Levi can feel the air pressure change around his ears, and she steps away with the staccato steps of a child sent to her room. But the crowd that isn’t dancing parts around her, and she meets Eren on the dancefloor as decorum tells her that she ought to, and when she hits the marble twirling, she’s sharing secrets in the exact same way that Historia had been.

Their steps are longer, this time. It’s more than likely because they’re both so fucking tall.

“So you’re Levi,” Historia says, sounding satisfied as she takes Ymir’s place beside him, though not going as far as to lean against the wall. The stone at her throat is no less impressive from this close up, and he keeps his eyes there for three breaths, steadying the vibrating in his bones. “The roses are beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Levi replies. There’s blood rushing in his ears, and he can’t hear the violins anymore. “They turned out really well, considering the humidity when you gather a shitload of people together.”

Historia curls the fingers of one hand beneath her chin, smiling. “They’re gorgeous.” Her necklace bobs when she swallows, and her jaw works around words that Levi can see coming, and he can almost hear them crunch against her molars when she says, “I’ve heard a lot about you. Good things, I mean.” For a moment, it doesn’t feel odd that there’s no ‘ _we_ ’ when she speaks. Maybe Eren’s spoiled him that way. “From Eren.”

Envy rises back up inside his chest, gathers at the bottom of his lungs, makes it hard to breathe. Inhaling through his nose doesn’t make it any easier, just makes the bubbles feel thicker as they press against his tonsils, cutting off his airflow.

There are conversations that he shouldn’t have, and he knows it. He knows that Historia is dangerous, if only because her despot father had ordered the murder of a ten-year-old prince that slept in pajamas with bird on them. He knows that the Reiss family had written his uncle into its employ, just like he knows that if Ymir wanted to, she could tell Eren that she’d smelled like lies on Levi’s breath.

But the violins are still pulling gently at his heart, and the smell of rose petals is sitting in his sinuses, and the memories of Eren’s hand on his waist and the rhythm of their footsteps is carrying through his pulse.

(“ _there’s weakness in you,_ ” Kenny had told him once as he’d cleaned the blood from his knife, using one long and filthy fingernail to pry at something stuck in the serrated edge. “ _that bordello run should’ve been a fucking breeze, but you let the madam get in the way. she wasn’t even fucking_ armed _._ ”

Levi had watched the shadows move across the ceiling, had listened to the  _tik-tik-tik_  of the way the knife pulled at Kenny’s nail. His broken ribs had made breathing a challenge, had made speaking into something like a chore.

“ _i wasn’t getting paid to kill the madam_ ,” Levi had replied, and his voice had almost been a wheeze. “ _so what would’ve been the point in that?_ ”)

His fingers find the knot on his ribcage where they hadn’t healed properly. He can feel the mark that Eren had sucked there when he presses down.

There are a lot of things that are dangerous these days. What’s one more?

“You don’t say,” Levi tells her, watching the sunburst on Eren’s forehead play in the light from the chandeliers, settling between his eyebrows, curving only slightly against the slope of his forehead.

An enigmatic smile rises to Historia’s lips, and her dress whispers-sighs-murmurs as she inches closer. She smells of wisteria, just as Ymir had. “I do say.” The fingers beneath her chin move to come up to her lips, hiding the shape they take but doing nothing to muffle whatever she speaks against them. “Do you want to know what he says about you?”

Levi catches Eren’s eyes for the—he hasn’t been keeping count. He doesn’t know the number, anymore, but his heart stops the same way it does every time, before it begins to whine against the dirt in his chest.

This time, he raises his hand in a wave that’s easy to miss. This time, he smiles.

This time, Eren’s face goes dark with color, and a grin rises to his mouth that’s wide enough to show teeth. This time, his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks and Levi can see his ears go red. This time, the circlet flashes underneath the chandeliers, and Eren doesn’t look away, even as Ymir says something that’s too quiet to make its way across the ballroom, getting crushed between dancer's shoes instead.

“I’d like that,” Levi says, and he means it. “What does he say about me?”

Historia leans close, and she begins to whisper.

Levi’s skin doesn’t feel so cold anymore.

-

(Eren had been able to feel the way his hair was sticking to the skin of his temples, just like he was able to see with perfectly clarity the fact that Armin had yet to be dancing at all. His hair had been perfectly brushed, and the Gubernatorial robes of his grandfather had lain perfectly across his shoulders as if they’d been fitted for them.

They probably had been, all things considered.

“ _you look like you’re having fun_ ,” Armin had told him, his hands folded and hidden beneath the wide sleeves of his robe. They’d been dyed the color of summer grasses, streaked with golden sand. “ _i didn’t even think you’d show up._ ”

“ _the queen regent would’ve gutted us,_ ” Eren had told him, had decided to catch his breath in an alcove adjacent to the buffet table, a glass of water held between his hands. The regal plural had come to him naturally, as it had always done in large crowds. “ _besides, dancing isn’t so bad once in a while. great cardio_.”

Armin had laughed, had waved at Mikasa from across the ballroom as she entertained yet _another_ dance partner who definitely wasn’t going to be interesting enough for a second turn around the floor. She’d smiled, then, and it had been sharp enough to cut glass.

“ _you’re happier,_ ” Armin had told him after a moment’s pause as he’d hidden his hands back away beneath his sleeves. Shadows of other attendees had moved along the wall behind him, their shapes moving together like pools of water. “ _it looks good on you_.”

Levi’s eyes had been on him, had settled on the back of his neck. He’d been able to feel it, somehow, like fingertips tracing up his vertebrae. Goosebumps had risen on his skin.

“ _it’s lightheaded delirium,_ ” Eren had said, had turned just enough to reveal the almost-too-tight lacing on the back of his jacket. “ _you know we get giddy when we can’t breathe_.”

Armin had snorted at that, had slid his gaze over Eren’s shoulder with a hum just low enough to rattle the roots of Eren’s teeth. “ _sure_ ,” Armin had humored him, had let a smile that told no secrets pull at the corners of his mouth. “ _whatever you say. in through the nose, out through the mouth, highness. wouldn’t want you to pass out and embarrass your family for decades to come._ ”

Eren had found himself laughing loud enough to make his ribs feel close to breaking, stretching the fabric of the jacket tight.)

He can taste roses between his teeth as he walks across the corridor’s thick carpet. Annie is two paces ahead of him, positioned slightly to his right, and her boots are silent as they make their way toward the guest bathroom. The dagger at her hip is a little louder, shifting in its sheath with every other step, the metal hiding stories inside the noise it makes.

“You know, there’s a staff bathroom closer to the ballroom,” Eren says, his shadow splitting into pieces as they walk through a gauntlet of all sconces, coupled with the wide lamps fixed to the arched ceiling above them. “No one’s gonna want to walk all the way down here unless they haven’t danced at _all_.”

The look Annie cuts him is unimpressed with his logic _and_ with his almost-petulance. It doesn’t get any softer when he smiles. “Her Majesty would have a stroke if you were to use a staff bathroom, especially where one of the staff could run into you. _Especially_ where someone of high birth could see you disappear into it. And then her ghost would come back to haunt _me_.”

Eren snorts, and it smells like wisteria and roses, like sweat and cold marble. “You sound like Jean.”

“If you hadn’t wandered off during the summer festival, Jean would’ve been here instead.” Her eyebrows rise on her forehead, but there’s a smile threatening to pull at one edge of her lips. “But no, you could’ve gotten him into a world of trouble, and his exact words were, ‘this is not my responsibility tonight, this is yours, and you better make sure you hold his hand on the way to the bathroom, because he’ll get lost.’”

“Is he _allowed_ to talk about me that way? I don’t think he’s allowed to talk about me that way.” He tugs at the hem of his jacket, rolling up his cuffs past his wrists as the bathroom comes into view.

“Looks like he already did, Your Highness,” Annie replies, pushing open the polished wooden door and standing against it to hold it ajar as he walks through. The sound of his boots against the stone is sudden, scattering across the marble floor and puddling in the sinks. “Remember to wash your hands when you’re done _thinking_.”

Eren’s laughter settles beside the noise his boots had made, splattering against the mirror. “This is the worst part of having babysitters. What do they call this in public bathrooms? Performance anxiety?”

“Stop being disgusting,” Annie says, tucking her hands behind her and pressing them to the bade of her spine, “and go to the bathroom so we can get back to your party. Otherwise Her Majesty will think you’ve cut and run again.”

The stall is made of the same wood as the door and its frame had been, and it whispers shut behind him. It’s cold in here, far colder than the ballroom had been, and he can feel the coming winter threatening to creep through the floor and cut through his clothes.

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” Eren asks, speaking over the lip of the stall itself. His voice is muffled by the wood, pressed close at either side.

“Probably not, no.”

The space between them goes quiet, then. Annie’s never been particularly talkative, but she’s always made an effort to _try_ , and that’s something that he appreciates—but this isn’t really different for them. A joke, a conversation, and then it fades into silence, settling around their shoulders like curtains, or clothing, or mist.

And so he leans backwards to press the ridge of his spine against the stall door, listening to the wood creak softly underneath his weight. It’s a habit more than a decade old, and it gives him the time to separate himself from the noise. It makes him grateful, a little, that Annie was chosen for tonight’s babysitting run. The quiet soothes the ringing in his ears.

(“ _eren_ ,” Hannes had been crouched outside one of the staff bathrooms, the toes of his boots peeking beneath the base of the stall. His voice had been gentle, and he’d been almost two years into sobriety, and Eren’s birthright had been a fresh wound between his eyebrows, “ _it’s time to come out if you’re not going to use the bathroom_.”

“no,” he’d replied, had folded himself onto the floor, out of reach of Hannes’ search hands. “ _i’m tired of people looking at me and talking to me and congratulating my mother as if i’m a fucking newborn_.”

A sigh, no wider than a thumb. “ _you shouldn’t say things like that, kiddo._ ”

“ _why not?_ ” He’d bent his legs tighter, and his lungs had been burning with... something. He hadn’t known what. “ _you do it all the time_.”

Hannes hadn’t known what to say to that, and Eren had felt like he’d won—until he’d heard the rustle of fabric and the creaking of Guard-leathers, and Hannes had taken a seat on the stall’s other side. The stone floor had been warm beneath his backside, a relic of the middle of spring. Eren had been able to hear the staff murmuring just outside the bathroom entryway.

“ _okay_ ,” Hannes had said, and Eren had known that he’d have to explain this to the Queen Regent later, just like he’d known Hannes would take all the blame in the process. It had made his ribs feel too small for everything inside them. “ _let’s take a breather, then. there’ll probably be leftovers, anyway_.”

Eren’s fingers had itched with the urge to pick at the golden scab on his forehead, and his eyes had burned with the urge to cry.

He wasted fifteen minutes on the bathroom floor, thinking. But he’d felt lighter after that.)

Eren can’t hear the ballroom from in here. Maybe it’s better than he’d chosen to follow Annie’s lead into the middle of a fucking hallway to hide in a _noble_ bathroom. The staff rooms are always noisy, always in the middle of things, always someone coming and going.

The stall door is smooth beneath his fingertips. He can still smell the remnants of the wisteria perfume that Historia prefers. The back of his neck still tingles where Levi’s attention had been. There are kisses along his body that he can feel when his clothes shift along his skin.

And there’s a hollowness in his chest.

He’d known, objectively, that he and Levi would be unable to dance. And he’d known, too, that he wouldn’t’ve traded anything in the universe for Levi’s presence here, for the view of him leaning against the wall, for the soft smile he’d been awarded on a particularly quick step that had almost cost Eren his own toes.

Levi had been beautiful, like he always is. The urge to kiss him is still a painful presence curling keep in his gut.

If it had been a movie, he wouldn’t’ve cared, probably. He’d’ve eaten the ballroom with long strides, would’ve offered his one hand to Levi in the way that charming princes do, would’ve asked for a dance and wiggled his eyebrows, would’ve—he doesn’t know. Kissed him, maybe.

But Levi would’ve hated him for that.

“Highness.” His title drops to the bathroom floor with all the poise of falling snow when Annie says it like that, melting when it hits the stone. The endless possibilities of how tonight could be going disappear from behind Eren’s eyelids, and he clears his throat to show he’d heard. “What kind of king do you think you’ll be?”

It’s a surprising enough question that he opens his eyes. “What?”

“What kind of king do you think you’ll be?” The edges of her question sharpen, pressing against the side of his face.

“A good and fair one?” There are swirls of color in the stone of the wall across from him, and he traces them with his eyes. “I—I don’t know? I’m... trying to figure it out.” A pause, and his throat tightens. There are—he swallows against a feeling that threatens to choke him. “I don’t think I’ll be King forever, Annie.”

It’s a confession that no one’s heard before. Not Hannes, not Jean. Certainly not his mother. And not Levi, either.

“Excuse me?” There might be a tremor in her voice if he listens close enough—but it gets lost in the sighing of the air conditioning above them, and Eren can’t be sure that he’d heard it at all.

“I just—I don’t know. I think that... after—if I get far enough to be considered a good King, I might just transfer power. I think a governing body would be better for us. As a country. Like—a prime minister, or something. Armin would be good at that. He’s great at managing people. And the people deserve to have _voices_. Petitioning the Crown isn’t always the best—I just think that maybe the best part of us is our people. And we should lean on that a little more.” Soil is collecting behind his teeth and it makes him want to cough. Instead, he changes tact, twisting his sentences into something far less... disorienting. “I’m thinking of _retiring_. The first King in history to do so! Maybe I’ll teach physics. Be the first King with a doctorate, too.”

This silence feels different from the others they’d shared in their history, feels heavier and chilled-over and makes his ears burn. Whatever space Eren had needed, he’s had enough of by now, and he bends the stall’s handle under his hand, popping the lock when he does.

Annie is still exactly where he’d left her, positioned beside the bathroom entrance, and her gaze follows him to the sink. Her face looks different, though he can’t explain how, and if he squints, he thinks he can see her skin cracking around her cheekbones, as if she’d been molded from ceramic and left too long too dry.

Ah, he’s got the word for that. She looks _brittle_.

Soap foams between his fingers as he lathers it beneath the spray from the faucet. It smells of vanilla and something else.

“Annie,” Eren says, catching a stray cloud of bubbles that had gotten stuck on the heel of his hand, “you don’t have to worry about what I said, or anything. I was just talking out of my ass, as usual. When I’m—I’d like to travel, when I’m King. I’d like... alliances. I’d like to be able to meet people where they are, and I’d like them to forget that I _didn’t_ travel a lot when I was a Prince.” Another pause, this one just as painful. Annie doesn’t make any effort to disturb it. “I want to be good at what I do.”

The sound that her boots make against the stone of the floor don’t alarm him. Neither does her reflection in the mirror, even as his spine rattles at the image of someone standing behind him, and so _close_.

His face hitting the rim of the lava stone countertop, however, alarms him deeply.

“Fucking _shit_ —“ there’s blood gathering on the ridge of his eyebrows, catching on his eyelashes, and his reflexes move his body before his brain can catch up. The sole of Annie’s boot had been aimed where the back of his skull had been, and that would’ve _hurt_ , would’ve knocked out some of his teeth. “Annie, what the _fuck?_ I was just thinking _out loud_ , and—if this is another one of Shadis’ bullshit ‘you have to be prepared for—for—“

His hands are shaking when he pushes himself upright. He doesn’t have the time to finish the thought that’s still on his tongue.

Annie moves forward, both her arms held in an offensive position, and she has the advantage. Eren is between her and the bathroom’s far wall. He won’t have any room to maneuver, to ask questions, to figure out what the _fuck_ is going on while Annie has him here.

She throws a punch that catches him on the cheek, and he leans in, twisting his body so that he can throw as much weight as possible into the force of his right leg against her ribcage. She coughs, stumbles, catches herself against the countertop in front of a sink he hadn’t been using.

The water in the one he’d used has washed away all the soap and the smell of vanilla and mint.

Eren moves behind her, turning on the toe of one boot to keep his back to the entryway as he inches toward it, the front of his body facing Annie as she falls back into a stance that he’s seen countless times. Her arms are hanging by her sides, her right one poised just above the hilt of her dagger.

There’s a complicated expression on her face, pulling her skin tight across her cheeks, threatening to split them open, and as Eren watches her, he thinks he sees her pupils freeze in place. She’s always been better at controlling herself than he’d been, and whatever emotion had been trying to make its way across her features dies before it can hang itself there.

Her dagger comes out with a whisper, pulled from the sheath at her left hip.

Eren feels vomit pushing upward from his stomach, feels his palms go cold, feels—feels. His ribs are—he can hear them breaking.

This isn’t a test, or anything.

She’s simply trying to kill him.

“Annie, what the fuck are you doing?” Eren asks, even though he _knows_ now. Daggers aren’t sparring weapons—shorter, fighting knives are. The stance her body shifts into with the blade in her hand is one that he’s never seen her use, and they’ve been practicing combat for... years. _Ages_.

“You’d make a great King,” Annie tells him, but her face is still giving him nothing. “I think that’s part of the problem. You’re already a great Prince.”

Eren doesn’t get it. Or—at least, he doesn’t think he does. _Whatever_ is happening right now doesn’t make any sense, and his bones feel too heavy, and he can feel his blood drying on his forehead. There are stars swimming in front of his eyes when he moves them too quickly, and the heels of his boots are so fucking _loud_ when he takes another step backward.

Annie’s toes seem to ghost across the floor when she lunges forward, the palm of one hand pressed to the base of the hilt of her dagger while the other is curled around it. It’s aimed for his solar plexus, and he’d drown in his own blood. It would take a while. It’d be painful, if she landed it.

She doesn’t.

Eren sidesteps, shoving her into the wall with his shoulder, but the dagger doesn’t fall from between her fingers, and she doesn’t lose her footing enough to take her to the floor. She shoves back, a schoolyard struggle, and Eren almost trips over the thick carpet in the main corridor before he turns his hips to compensate for his momentum.

He can taste sawdust in his mouth—can smell summertime and sweat, can catch the afterimage of sunlight on sword-sheaths behind his eyelids when he blinks.

But this isn’t the summer. This isn’t the summer, and this isn’t the training yard, and when her dragger comes for him for the third time, it comes at him hilt first. It hits him in the nose, propelled forward by her knees from a thirty-degree angle. Blood gathers in his mouth, pushes between his teeth, crawls down his throat like too-old molasses. He can’t tell if it’s broken or not.

When he speaks, it comes out wet, and it’s one word only. “ _Why?_ ”

Annie pauses, then. His blood is on the hilt of her dagger. She sounds entirely sincere when she says, “it’s nothing personal, Eren.”

(Two horses. Two palace guards. A chef’s assistant with freckles.

None of them had died for any other reason than they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’d simply been near him. Impersonal and professional, all of them. But not _quite_ professional enough, because the only ones who’d died had never been the targets in the first place.

They’d just been in the way.)

Something blinds him, then.

The memory of smoke burns in his sinuses as he moves forward—one step, two steps, three—to keep up with the retreat Annie tries to pull. He aims one fist at her chest, can hear the wind tear from her lungs with a sound that’s a cross between a cough and a wheeze. His left fist goes for the side of her face but doesn’t land, blocked instead by the arm with the dagger. The light catching on the blade makes his head ache, the tightness of his jacket makes it difficult to catch a _single fucking breath_.

He swallows more of his own blood and moves to his right, just within the circle of her arms before she can shift her body into a guard position.

Annie’s dagger is close enough to his throat to be lethal, positioned point-first toward his pulse, and it would be _absolutely_ problematic if he didn’t grab her right elbow, twisting his body and her arm at the same time. But he does.

The dagger hits the carpet, and so it doesn’t make a sound.

Her body is still close enough to his spine that he can feel the leather of her Guards’ armor brushing against the lacing of his doublet. They’re close enough together that when he slams his head backward, he can feel her forehead knock against it in a way that’s going to bruise them both.

Annie’s arms go loose and Eren steps out of them, his body falling into a perfect pivot, one hand reaching for the knife tucked away in his boot, pressed to his shin. It’s a motion he’s practiced countless times, and the reflex it had made for itself doesn’t care if Eren’s nose is bleeding or if his heart isn’t beating quite right. It just moves his muscles, curls his fingers around the ornate hilt, slams his knuckles against the side of Annie’s face, and sends her to the floor.

The reflex has the knife against her throat, has his knees on either side of her hips, but it hesitates.

No. _He_ hesitates.

Blood drips from his chin to Annie’s throat, from his nose to her cheek, and her skin is turning purple. Her skin is turning purple because she can’t fucking breathe, because she’s dying, and it’s swallowing the freckles on her face, and her hands are coming up to her throat because she’s been _poisoned_ , because—

“Are you going to do it?” She asks, and her face is normal. Her skin is pink from exertion, and his blood is drawing a line toward the carpet. “Or not?”

Eren punches her, and her head snaps to the side. His other hand is white knuckled around the knife.

When she speaks again, there’s blood on her teeth. “Try again.”

The second punch silences her, and it’s only when she doesn’t make another move that he uncurls his fingers from the wooden hilt. His palms are sweating when he stands, and his fingers won’t stop _shaking_ as he ties her wrists with his belt. By the time he uses her own belt to bind her ankles, his hands are almost useless. Just like the fucking rest of him.

“I hope you realize that tying your boots is a poor excuse for leaving a party, Your—holy _shit_.” The voice behind him is loud, and it sounds like the captain of the palace guard. It sounds like Nile fucking Dawk, and it sounds too loud, and Eren’s ears are ringing. His ears are ringing and he can’t stand _up_. “Your Highness?”

Eren pulls his bicep back close to his body when Nile takes it in one hand, though his grip had been gentle. He’s sure that the guard-captain can feel the tremors in his shoulders as they rattle through his body, and it makes him _sick_. All of this makes him sick. Where had that come from? What had he _done?_

“Your Highness,” Nile still sounds too loud, though he’s speaking far softer now. His breath smells like orange juice as he crouches beside him. “What happened?”

“She tried to kill me,” Eren tells him, and his voice is—he can’t talk straight. His words had cracked open, and his windpipe won’t fucking cooperate. “She tried to kill me.”

He can see Nile out of the corner of his eye as he leans forward, can see the way the lamplight gets stuck in his stubble, sharpening each hair into needles. And then he says, “you’re bleeding. We need to get you looked at, and then you can tell me what happened. Okay?”

Nile doesn’t wait for a response before he’s already reaching across the short distance between them both to smear his thumb through the blood coming from Eren’s nose. But the contact doesn’t come, if only because his legs decide that they’ve had enough of bending, and that anyone’s hands on his face would surely make him vomit. It’d take forever to get out of the carpet. Blood will take forever to get out of these clothes. His blood. He’s bleeding, oh _heavens above_ , he’s bleeding because Annie had just tired to—

“We’re going to our room,” Eren says with a voice that isn’t his. It’s too even and too cold and the breaths that make it up are too deep. They fill his lungs too fully and so they can’t be his.

Nile stands to meet him, a frown pulling heavily at the corners of his lips. “Your Highness, that’s not really wise right now until we know just what—“

“We’re going to our room _right now_.” Everything is edged in onyx, and for a moment he thinks he must sound like his mother, because Nile stops in his tracks. And so he proceeds. “Get her out of our sight.”

The guard-captain is caught between two emotions, and Eren can see them warring on his face. He doesn’t give them time to settle as he steps over Annie’s body, already stirring from where he’d knocked her unconscious, and his boots still make no noise against the carpet. It’s as if he’s walking on a cloud, or on water, and the only thing keeping him afloat is willpower.

“Your _Highness_ —“ a groan interrupts him, soft enough to be Annie’s, and Eren is sure Nile isn’t following him, because then he hears, “oh _no_ , you’re not moving an inch.” The sound of a knife moving out of reach, whispering against the rug before it clamors against the stone floor.

It’s a distraction enough that makes it safe enough to run.

Blood is congealing on Eren’s upper lip, and his hands are fumbling with the lacing at the back of his neck as he pulls at it, trying to make it easier—make _something_ easier, just make one fucking thing easier, like breathing, or running, or escaping the rising noise behind him. Too many people are talking, and some of them are shouting, and there are members of the staff in the hallway that are watching him as if they’ve never seen him before.

Eren takes a corner and keeps moving. The laces aren’t getting any more cooperative.

He tastes smoke beneath his blood. Smoke, and a provincial Governor’s dining room. Smoke, and a provincial Governor’s dining room, and saltwater on a breeze. All of these things, and summertime, and sawdust, and he can’t fucking breathe. He can’t fucking _breathe_ , he can’t breathe, and his jacket won’t come undone, and his knees are giving out at the staircase, and now his hands are shaking against the rug and they won’t fucking _stop_ , they won’t stop, they—

“Eren?” Breathless and scared. Bootsteps, purposefully loud on the floor. There’s more shouting, far away, but it doesn’t matter. Levi speaks again, and his knees pop when he crouches, and there’s sweat at his temples. He’s panting. Watching is already-pale skin washout further looks like it’s happening in slow motion. “Fucking hell.”

“Levi.” His name breaks in his mouth and cuts the inside of his cheeks. “Levi, Annie tried to kill me.”

Levi’s pupils can’t seem to settle on a width as he looks over Eren’s face, and his lips go thin enough to become bloodless. His nose wrinkles with something that looks a lot like _anguish_ , and Eren can’t explain where it’s coming from. Maybe his own face looks worse than he’d thought.

“The guard was pretty quick,” Levi tells him, and he’s not too loud. Thank the gods above that he’s not too loud. “They broke up the—everyone is being held in the ballroom. I used one of your—“ He stops, and he swallows, and Eren licks a flake of blood from his upper lip. It tastes of copper and salt. “One of your gopher tunnels. I—“ Levi holds out a hand, and leaves it raised. His fingers are trembling, a little. “Can I have a look at you?”

There’s a pause that stretches into... forever, it feels like. Levi leaves his hand there, looking like it’s ready to cradle Eren’s face. His thumb would be callused, if it did, and his fingers would feel nice there.

He feels his throat burn before it closes up. The stinging at the corners of his eyes feels like it’s happening to someone else’s body, his skin rippling as his ribs creak around a gasp that turns into a hiccup that turns into a—

Sob. It’s dry. Eren swallows. Coughs. Fresh blood oozes from his nose. Or maybe it’s mucus.

“She tried to kill me,” Eren says for the—again. He says it again. “She tried to—she tried to fucking kill me. She tried to kill me? Why did she—she asked me a question, and then she tried to kill me. I don’t know why she did it. Why would she do that? We were—she was my friend. We—for years, we’ve—she practiced with me, with knives. She—“

His throat is as weak as the rest of him, the words dying halfway between his chest and his tonsils, and they lodge into his windpipe in jagged shapes.

“Eren,” Levi tries his question a second time, and he’s being _so_ —fucking soft. _Gentle_. Eren hates it. He fucking _hates it_ —“Can I please have a look at you?”

There’s something fragile about the way he repeats his question. His fingers are blurring together in Eren’s vision. Everything his blurring together. Bleeding together. There’s still blood in his mouth.

All he can do is nod.

(An whisper of an echo, of a memory, of a dream. A dark hallway with muted wall sconces, a stone floor that had seemed to be freezing cold beneath his feet, pajamas that had been soft, and warm, and decorated with birds.

A shadow stepping out from the wall.

His own voice, heavy with sleep, barely loud enough to muffle the rumbling of his stomach. “ _who are you?_ ”

A reply, barely remembered. Maybe fabricated. Maybe entirely a lie. “ _a ghost_ ,” the shadow says, after a moment’s hesitation. Or maybe it had been two moments. Maybe it had been longer. “ _go back to sleep, okay? don’t come out again_.”

A voice, pulled taut like a wire. His bedroom door, shut behind him. The lock clicks, in the memory. He falls back asleep, wrapped in a duvet that smells of lemongrass, or oranges, or grapefruit. Sunrise doesn’t come for a few more hours.

He wakes up craving toast. Or maybe pancakes. Or maybe waffles.

Or maybe it’s not even really remembered at all.)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren wonders, a little, if every kiss will feel like it’s... inevitable. Or fated, or _destined_ , or—or something like that. He wonders if it’ll always leave him _this_ breathless, if the way Levi’s thumbs feel against his cheeks will always twist his stomach just like so. He wonders a lot of things as Levi holds his face between his palms, as their noses brush together when he adjusts the angle of their lips, as Levi sighs against his mouth.
> 
> “I was waiting to kiss you,” Eren tells him between one breath and the next. The watered-down sunlight of the morning flutters against the rafters, throwing oddly-shaped shadows against the slope of the ceiling. “Until I brushed my teeth, I mean.”
> 
> Levi huffs a breath against Eren’s lips, and when he speaks his voice is low enough to crawl along the floor. “Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna wait anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey my dudes! i'm so sorry i'm so behind. i've got internship stuff and class stuff and work stuff that i'm trying to juggle, but i haven't forgotten! i hope this lives up to what you may have waited for.

(The Queen Regent had come to visit him, three hours after—it. Everything. _That_.

She’d sat upon his mattress in the exact same place that Levi had been only thirty minutes before, and it had sighed beneath her weight, the springs groaning gently beneath too many layers of fluff and cotton and whatever else. The loft had creaked something somber, and the sound had settled high in the vaulted ceilings, like bats in some greyscale horror movie.

Eren had still been able to feel Levi’s fingers in his hair. He’d been able to smell him against the pillows, the sheets, his _fingertips_ —even past the blood that had congealed in his nose.

For some reason, it’d made him feel sick. For _some_ reason, everything made him feel sick.

 _Ha!_ For some reason. _For some reason_. For some _fucking_ reason.

For some reason, Annie had tried to kill him.

“ _my darling_ ,” his mother had said with a voice that moved like tendrils of ivy, the words curling on his duvet in the shape of pronged leaves, “ _is there anything i can get you?_ ” Her hand had been softer than Levi’s, uncallused and very regal, and the pads of her fingers had brushed over his hair, his ear, his cheek in a pattern they hadn’t used since he’d been very young. Since before he’d been declared heir apparent, probably.

There had been a teacup, untouched and now long cold, within her field of vision, and yet she’d asked him anyway. It had been sitting beside his circlet on the bedside table.

It’d been funny, somehow—the way his mother had shaken dust from skills she hadn’t used since he’d been too young to speak properly, the way she’d rounded out the edges of her words into something that could sit safely on his pillows and cut nothing. He’d been unable to place his finger on _why_ it was funny, exactly, there in the dimness of his too-big bedroom with too-many hiding places for shadows.

But then the Queen Regent had turned her body, and she’d bowed her head, and she’d left a kiss against his temple that smelled of rosewater—and Eren had figured it out. The feeling sawed its way through his chest, had dumped itself onto his bedsheets in an ugly and asymmetrical _mass_ , had made his eyes sting with its stench.

For the first time in his life, he’d felt _fragile_.)

Eren doesn’t leave his bedchambers for eight days.

All things considered, it’s been the most convenient time to kill him since his birth.

People have come in and out, in blurs of sound and barely-there breezes, whispers and the smells of cooked food. Hannes, with breakfast. Jean, with lunch. Sasha, with dinner. His mother, in between meals. They’ve asked things, and he’s probably responded with sentences that don’t matter. Occasionally, he supposes, he’s showered. When he’s remembered, he’s almost sure that he’s eaten, even if it hasn’t been much.

The sun has traveled across the walls, sighed against the ceiling, only to disappear again.

When the sun sets, it feels a lot like the family crypt had, years and years ago. Eren has licked away the imitation of moss against his teeth, of cold stone, of bone-deep dampness. His thumb has traced the ornate patterns carved against marble coffins against his sheets, has left behind the feeling of stone-dust against the pads of his fingers.

At night, Levi has come to see him. Stone whispers against stone as the passageway beneath the loft opens, and Levi’s bootsteps have been almost silent against the floor, on the stairs, on the base of the loft itself.

As always, when Levi speaks, it has sounded like rainfall against freshly turned earth. The gardens cling to his clothes, leaving traces of soil and flower petals against the pillows, and the sheets, and the duvet. If Eren had turned his face into Levi’s palm, he’s certain that he would’ve been able to _taste_ the outdoors that he’s been missing—the silver creeper vine and the fucking lemon queen sunflowers and the helenium blossoms that probably look like lit candles even with winter building in the mountains.

But he didn’t, and so the memories of the gardens only rattled around in his sinuses as Levi’s fingers moved through his hair, as he told stories about his day, as he—as he waited for Eren to say anything at all.

He’d waited a whole fucking week for nothing.

As the sun paints itself along the rafters for the ninth time, hanging golden tendrils over the wood, digging almost-silver threads into the grained furrows, Eren wonders how long a person ought to wait for—whatever. For... him to get out of bed? For him to—what? Get over it and move on? For him to... go back in time and pay more attention. For him to see this coming. For—

Eren sniffles once and it still hurts to breathe through his nose. He can taste the echo of blood when he swallows, can feel its ghost flaking against his back molars. It makes his stomach twist, makes him want to _vomit_ , makes his muscles tighten to the point that he _has_ to spring into motion—

Except he doesn’t. His body stays exactly where it is.

When he blinks, he can feel the crust of restless sleep cracking at the corners of his eyes.

The door to his bedchambers whispers open for the second time this morning, and a thought, edged in fog and raw cotton, tickles the back of his skull. He’s certain that Hannes has been by already with breakfast, and it’s just this side of too early for him to come and pick up an untouched plate.

Besides, these bootsteps are different.

Hannes’ have an even rhythm, solid against the floor, muffled where his boots hit carpet. This is different; the quiet, faraway flutter of the soles of boots against the stone floor, the wooden stairs to the loft, the outermost edge of the loft proper.

Eren knows them just as well as Hannes’, even as he doesn’t roll over to watch Levi crest the stairs. Just like he knows that sigh, and that hum, and the sound of Levi’s fingers trailing over the outermost stitching on the duvet.

Sunlight makes itself a curtain on the rafters. Dust motes circle one another inside it.

The image of rainfall against earth, against wide leaves, against flower petals rises from the floor when Levi speaks, starting the same way every conversation has for the past _eight days_.

“Eren,” he says, like he’s _been_ saying, like he’ll say for—probably not much longer. His fingers have stopped moving against the bedspread. “Time to get up.”

Or—wait. That’s not how this starts.

Eren’s lips thin around something he could say—something witty enough that it’d be almost normal, so he could fall back into the ease of... this. Talking. But the words wither away behind his teeth, curling into unrecognizable shapes, tasting of ash as it mixes with his spit. Disgusting.

Bootsteps, shifting again, just out of view and almost silent.

The glow of the rafters haloes Levi’s hair as he steps into Eren’s line of sight and he’s—beautiful. That’s not _surprising_ , it’s never been, but it feels like there’s a hand pressing on the center of his chest. Eren can hear his ribs cracking under its pressure.

There are lines on Levi’s face, and his lips are curved downward beneath the weight of _this_. His eyebrows are furrowed, as they had been the night that everything had happened, as they had been when he’d reset Eren’s nose. But, _gods above_ , if his face isn’t painfully fucking soft, like any edges had been rubbed away by the morning.

One of his ribs breaks as Levi looks at him like that. He can feel it pop free from his sternum, leaving him winded.

“Eren,” Levi says again, and he’s impossible to look away from as his fingers find their way into Eren’s hair, his nails drawing lines against his scalp, “we’ve got somewhere to be. Time to get up.”

Eren’s voice cracks like thin ice—or like rock, breaking away from a mountain that’s too far away to hear properly. “We? We who?”

Levi’s fingertips against the shell of his ear, the side of his face, the pad of his thumb drawing over Eren’s lower lip. And then, “you and me. I told your mother we were going _out_ today, and I’d hate to be a liar. So it’s _really_ time for you to get your ass out of bed, yeah?”

If he listens, he thinks he can hear his own bones vibrating beneath his skin.

“ _Out?_ ” Levi shifts his weight between his feet as Eren watches him, and his hair falls into place above his eyebrows. Their faces are now close enough that Eren can see the shadows beneath his eyes. “Wait, you did what?”

“I told the Queen Regent that we are leaving the palace today.” Levi’s thumb drags a trail along Eren’s jaw, catching on razorburn left from the middle of the night before—and then both his hands grab the edge of the duvet, pulling the fabric from Eren’s hands and scattering it down against the footboard.

It’s jarring, how chilly the air is around him. Jarring _enough_ that he pushes himself upright, appalled.

“You didn’t.” For a moment, Eren can breathe through his nose, can feel his palms begin to sweat against the sheets, can feel his _toes_ curl. But then he swallows, and the healing bridge of his nose aches when he sniffles, and the sandpaper in his windpipe begins to rub his words raw. “Where—what are we doing?”

There’s satisfaction in the way Levi cocks his head, then, and there’s almost a smile pulling at his lips. _Almost_. “That’s a surprise. So get out of bed.”

They’re more-or-less the same height like this—Eren, sitting up against the pillows and Levi standing just adjacent to the mattress—but Levi offers out a hand anyway.

One heartbeat echoes between them. Two. Three. A breath. Four heartbeats.

And then Eren pulls himself out of bed, using Levi’s hand for leverage. There’s no dirt against his palm to indicate that Levi had been in the gardens at all this morning, just like there’s no earthen smell clinging to his hair, or his skin, or his clothes, despite the grass-and-ground stains against his jeans. Standing up changes the perspective of his bedchambers, a little.

It brings attention to the fact that Levi is... casually dressed. Some cable-knit sweater over jeans about half-as-old as Eren is.

“Well look at _you_ ,” Levi says, like a dewdrop sliding along the curve of a leaf before it hits the ground beneath it, “still looking like a prince with your hair all... like that.”

Eren clears his throat, coughing against things that had never made it more than halfway toward the back of his tongue. “Yeah, well, you know. It’s probably the style now, having hair ‘ _like that._ ’” Levi’s hand is warm in his own when he squeezes it, biting his tongue against the urge to—kiss him? To... pull him close? To— “Good morning. Uh, to you.”

Levi scoffs, his nose wrinkling with it, his face wearing an expression far easier to stomach than—whatever that had been, moments earlier. “Good morning. Good to see you, uh, out and about.” His eyes move back and forth over Eren’s face, slowly, and it reminds him of the corridor, reminds him of the base of the stairs, reminds him of how Levi had reached across the distance between them to look at his nose and—

Eren flinches when Levi’s palm presses to his cheek, cradling the left side of his face. He pretends that he didn’t just see a fog loop around Levi’s pupils, muffling whatever feeling had been going on inside them.

He leans into the touch instead of asking about the _thing_ he’d seen shift on Levi’s face, and wonders if Levi can feel the thrumming of his pulse through the thin skin under his fingers. “So, uh,” Eren says, and at the edges of his vision he thinks he can still see glimpses of the corridor, the stairs, _that night_ creeping into his bedroom, “you came through the front door. What _will_ people say?”

Something clears in the unbroken winter sky of Levi’s irises, and he blinks—blinks, frowns, wrinkles his nose. “Whatever the fuck they want. I already told you, your mother knows what we’re doing, and she gave me ‘ _permission,’_ for whatever that’s worth. I’m not going to sneak around for no reason when the whole point is just to get you out of the fucking palace, but that starts with getting you out of your _bedroom_.”

Color, a little bit furious, has begun to collect in the hollows of Levi’s cheeks. Eren watches it tint the outermost edges of Levi’s ears.

The hand is back against Eren’s chest. Another rib pops free from his sternum under its weight. “Right. Sorry, I—about getting out of—sorry.”

Levi’s fingers stiffen against his cheek, his free hand coming up to join the first. His grip is solid, Levi’s thumbs moving back-and-forth in trembling lines along the shape of his cheekbones as he pulls Eren’s face down just enough to almost make them eye-level. There’s a storm beginning in the furrow between Levi’s eyebrows, in the tension beside his lips.

“That’s _not_ what I was saying.” In his voice is the rumble of distant thunder. Eren can feel it in his own chest, rattling the loose ribs against one another. “You’ve got every right to want to stay in here. You’ve got every right to feel like—to feel like you do. But there’re people talking about how help you, but no one’s doing anything.” Gods above, from here Levi’s eyelashes go on _forever_ —and Eren’s so glad that he can notice that. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he wasn’t able to notice that. “Don’t you dare fucking apologize to me.”

There’s something he should say to that, but Eren’s windpipe twists itself into knots and it’s choking him.

He feels like he can’t breathe.

“Besides,” and Levi’s voice shifts again, turning itself into sunlight, holding onto the rafters in a loose grip, “someone was going to know anyway, eventually. Right? You said so yourself—kissing breaks.”

For a moment, Eren can taste the hint of roses and wisteria against the back of his tongue.

(There’s a memory about the ballroom that doesn’t hurt to think about.

Eren had been able to feel Levi’s eyes on him as he’d swept around the dancefloor, the marble beneath his boots almost _too_ polished, sending the reflections of skirts and legs and _light_ in every direction. There had been sweat beading on the back of his neck, at his hairline, beneath the collar of his too-tight jacket.

He’d been unable to keep a stupid fucking half-smile off his face.

“ _so_ ,” Ymir had said, shifting the position of her feet as they’d played a game in the middle of hundreds of eyes—switching between leading and following in classic dances, just barely toeing the line of impropriety, “ _are you ever going to ask your gardener to dance, or are you going to wait until_ next time? _”_

Eren’s attention had shifted from the khol painted around Ymir’s eyes to where Levi had been standing, tucked in an alcove almost hidden by immaculate roses. He’d been sharing words, in stops and starts, with Her Majesty Historia Reiss.

Levi’s fingers had fluttered in a wave when their eyes had met. Eren had almost felt it against his lips, and his ears had gone _hot_ in the span of two heartbeats. His heart had twisted inside his chest, the smile stuck on his face going wider—and then he’d disappeared as they’d shifted around in another circle.

Ymir shifted again, falling back into the follower’s footwork.

“ _if you’re going to keep making eyes like that_ ,” Ymir had said, “ _you’d better be asking him to dance._ ”

Eren had swallowed, then—had almost allowed himself to get caught up in the fantasy of sweeping Levi around the ballroom, of stealing kisses, of tipping him backward, of—all of it. “ _next time_ ,” he’d said, soft enough that he’d let it get crushed beneath the feet of the other dancers, had let it get lost inside the folds of the attendee’s clothes. “ _we’ll ask him next time_.”

“ _will we be invited to see that?_ ” Ymir’s voice, just as quiet as his had been. Her breath had stirred the smell of wisteria between them. “ _historia and i would like to keep it for posterity._ ”

Eren had snorted, had rolled his eyes as they took another turn together. For the first time in his life, the fucking _majestic plural_ had tasted of roses as he’d spoken it. Roses and champagne and freshly pressed clothes. “ _we guess we can squeeze you onto the list. probably_.”

Ymir’s laughter had blended into the sound of violins, rising toward the domed ceiling of the ballroom, hanging there like lace.)

Eren wonders, a little, if every kiss will feel like it’s... inevitable. Or fated, or _destined_ , or—or something like that. He wonders if it’ll always leave him _this_ breathless, if the way Levi’s thumbs feel against his cheeks will always twist his stomach just like so. He wonders a lot of things as Levi holds his face between his palms, as their noses brush together when he adjusts the angle of their lips, as Levi sighs against his mouth.

“I was waiting to kiss you,” Eren tells him between one breath and the next. The watered-down sunlight of the morning flutters against the rafters, throwing oddly-shaped shadows against the slope of the ceiling. “Until I brushed my teeth, I mean.”

Levi huffs a breath against Eren’s lips, and when he speaks his voice is low enough to crawl along the floor. “Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna wait anymore.”

Eren doesn’t know what to say to that, even as something starts to pile on the back of his tongue, covered in thorns and too-dry earth. It threatens to choke him, this fucking feeling rising up in his throat. It presses hard against his windpipe, starts a distant clanging in his ears.

When he takes a breath to say something meaningful, to apologize again, to do  _anything_ , it’s as if his jaw his wired shut—but it doesn’t really matter anyway. Levi beats him to the punch.

“Come on,” Levi continues, using one hand, pressed to the back of Eren’s head, to bring their foreheads together in a soft  _tap_. The furrow between Levi’s eyebrows smooths out when it touches the center of the sunburst just above-and-between Eren’s own. “We’ve got to get you  _presentable_  for the shit I’ve got planned.”  

Eren swallows twice before he speaks, and it doesn’t hurt to say, “I feel like you’re inching in on my role? The whole enigma-mystery thing.”

Levi snorts, breathes a laugh against Eren’s lips, and steps backward, letting his other hand drag its knuckles along his cheek before it drops away. “ _I_  think you’re being dramatic. There’s not a whole lot of shit I’ve got to show you. It’s not like I’m about to take you underground and show you secret passages into the city, or whatever. That’s something  _you_  would do.”

Something flickers in the back of Eren’s brain—all the things that he doesn’t really know about Levi, or the things that he kind of knows, or the things he’d like to know. It lingers there long enough for Eren to cup his hands around it and save it for later, to warm the center of his palms while he waits for the right moment to ask.

Until then, Eren’s body almost follows the sensation of Levi’s fingers against his skin, but he holds himself still for half-a-moment before he hooks one finger into the closest of Levi’s belt loops. The denim is worn against his knuckle. “That’s a little over-the-top. It sounds like you think I’m some kind of mole-person.”

“More like a gopher-person.” This time, it  _is_  a smile tugging at Levi’s features. It’s wide enough that it toys with the skin beside his eyes and it gives birth to stars in the clouds of his irises. “But come with me. We need to get you as normal-looking as possible. Campus-ready, like—“ a pause, a smile, and Eren thinks he can catch the smell of summer-warm brick, thinks he can feel the whisper of fountain-mist against his face, “—like, you know. When we traipsed around the university for your benefit.”

“Campus-ready,” Eren repeats, and when he breathes, the shit that’s been tying itself in knots in his chest feels looser than it has in days. “Right.”

The bed stays unmade as they make their way down from the loft, Eren’s finger still hooked in the loop of Levi’s jeans. The stairs creak under their weight and sunlight scatters out of the way of their shadows as their feet hit the stone floor at the bottom.

Eren curls his toes against the chill.

“I’m going to find you something to wear that’s not ironed,” Levi tells him, his voice stirring the quiet like wind through ferns. “You do whatever it is that you have to do in the morning, like maybe... brushing your hair.” One hand comes up to ruffle against the mess that Eren’s certain his hair is in, and it makes him snort against the feeling.

“What, I thought you said it looked good _like that?_ ”

“I did,” Levi replies. “But _I_ get to see it _like that_.” He lets his fingers linger against Eren’s scalp before he pulls his hand away, tapping his index finger against the tattoo in the middle of Eren’s forehead. He can feel it in the soles of his feet. “Don’t forget about this.”

 _who could fucking forget about it?_ gathers in his mouth, knocks against his teeth, buzzes in his sinuses. It’s a stupid response, rubs the inside of his cheeks raw—so what Eren says instead is, “ _obviously_. I was sneaking out of parties before I met you, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Another tap against the sunburst, and then Levi stands on his toes and tugs Eren down by his collar to press a kiss there. His heart feels like—his heart feels like— “But what I _also_ remember is that when you were fucking around with _my_ fields, your concealer smeared. So I don’t think a reminder is a huge issue.”

His heart feels _full_ —full and about to burst, or maybe full but _famished_.

“Okay, _okay_.” There’s heat pooling in his cheeks, gathering in his ears, sitting in his gut. “I’ll make sure it’s absolutely protected. No one’ll see it.”

Levi laughs, letting it hold sunlight like a fucking _plant_ , making energy out of _nothing_. It’s so light that it sounds _relieved_ when it drags itself across the walls, the floor, the furniture. It makes it feel like there are flower petals brushing against the lining of his stomach, even as Levi is already stepping toward Eren’s open closet.

“All the—all the clothes that are _normal_ are in the very back,” Eren says to the curve of Levi’s shoulders. “They’re behind a lot of shit so no one would find them.”

“Okay,” Levi turns his head only slightly to toss the word over his shoulder—and then he disappears through the arched doorway, flicking the light on as he does.

And then it’s just Eren, his bedchambers, and the plate of artfully arranged fruit that’s sitting on his coffee table. Beside it sits a mug of coffee, absolutely cold by now, a container of sugar, and a small carafe of milk. A ring of condensation has gathered beneath the carafe and spread, a little, reaching swollen hands toward the plate of fruit.

It’s tempting, the setup. It’s tempting _enough_ that he takes three strawberries with on his way to the bathroom, tossing away the caps in the trash beneath his sink when there’s nothing but strawberry juice clinging to the corners of his lips.

The man in the mirror that meets his eyes has a lot more on his face than strawberry juice.

There’s a cut across the middle of his nose, and the skin around it is still purple-blue-green from the force with which his face had hit the bathroom counter. More bruising has gathered around one eye, and a split in his lip keeps having to grow a new scab every time Eren bites on it too hard. And, _naturally_ , there’s the golden sun in the middle of his forehead, throwing the bathroom light back and the mirror and making the shape of his hair against his skin look a little bit like cloud-cover.

Gods above, he looks fucking terrible. Eren himself looks fucking terrible.

He doesn’t look any less terrible as he brushes his teeth.

The process of cleaning up is faster than Eren had thought it would be. The toothpaste had left behind the aftertaste of cinnamon as he rubs concealer against the noon-high sun inked into his skin, blending its edges into the same color as the rest of his face.

At least the bruising will make it easier to be somebody else for a little while. It’s hard to imagine the Prince looking like _this_.

The drawer directly beneath the counter chatters quietly when he shuts it, and Levi’s shape appears in the mirror over his shoulder. In his hands is a sweatshirt that Eren’s sure that he’d been kissed by Levi in and a pair of worn jeans that he’d forgotten that he owned. It probably doesn’t smell like the gardens anymore, but the thought is kind of nice.

Eren almost turns to meet him halfway, but his hips stop short of turning. Something trembles inside his chest, and he can’t _move_ , and the mirror is reflecting a nightmare he can’t remember having.

It doesn’t go away when he blinks.

(Levi, at his back, and their reflections in the mirror of the palace restroom, offset from the corridor closest to ballroom. The lava stone is throwing and absorbing light in equal measure. The sink is whispering, water rotating around the drain sitting at the bottom of the polished bowl.

Eren’s chest feels tight, like he can’t breathe, like something’s out of place, like something’s _wrong_.

But Levi’s face is soft, and there’s a smile on his lips, and—

The bridge of his nose hits the edge of the bathroom counter. He can taste blood in his mouth.)

Eren’s knuckles go white as he holds himself upright against the wall beside his sink. The morning has painted itself along his bathroom walls, has collected around the drain of his shower, has fixed itself to the corners of Levi’s eyes as he looks at him with that—with that _fucking_ face that’s almost too soft to be real, and twists itself inside Eren’s chest to spear through his ribs and his lungs and his heart.

The bathroom spins.

“Hey.” Levi’s fingers against his pulse, his cheek, his forehead. “Hey, are you okay?”

It’s like coughing up thistles when Eren tells him, “I’m fine.”

(Jean, pressed against his back. Panic, rising in his throat, a bile that _burned_ his tonsils.

“ _how often have you been notified of the attempts on your life?_ ” Shadis had asked him, the question clogged by the humidity of the summer. “ _your highness_.”)

The same motion, for the second time. Levi’s fingers against his pulse, his cheek, his forehead, like he’s feeling for a fever. “You—” a pause that creaks like rusted hinges, and then Levi tries again. “We don’t have to go out today. It was—I shouldn’t’ve just made fucking plans. That was—I shouldn’t’ve done that.”

“I said I’m fine.” Eren clears his throat as the world rights itself, the noises of the ballroom and the murmur of the summer chasing themselves around in his ears. “I’m really, really fine. I wanna get out of here.” Tension, everywhere on Levi’s face. It’s like looking at someone carved from stone. “What _ever_ did you pick out for me to wear?”

The clothes are draped over one arm and they’re soft when Levi hands them over—but Levi doesn’t say anything. Curtains have covered the windows of his eyes, leaving them still and a little bit frozen. Eren can feel them against his face with all the weight of mountain snow.

The bathroom is silent except for the rustle of his clothes over his hair, his shoulders, his hips. The soles of his bare feet whisper against the tile floor. Once, Levi breathes deeply and shuts his eyes.

Eren feels like he’s suffocating.

He breaks the silence underneath his own bodyweight, barreling through it shoulder-first. It washes out the numbness in his mouth with something bitter, instead.

“Do you know how Annie’s doing?”

For a moment, Levi doesn’t look like he’s alive. He’s still enough to be a painting, etched into a canvas with the edge of a knife and left to sit there. But then he swallows, and the cracked pieces of his posture begin to flake from the line of his throat, from his elbows, from the shift of his hips.

And then he says, “she didn’t last more than twenty-four hours in a holding cell.” The shape Levi’s mouth takes looks painful, like it’s scraping against his tongue to get it out. “No one’s sure if someone gave her something poisoned or if the palace guard just missed something when they searched her and she had it the whole time.” His voice gets lower as he continues, “I figured someone would’ve told you by now.”

It feels like smoke is sitting in his lungs. His face feels hot.

He thinks of the chef’s apprentice, who had died after eating poisoned food. He’s been thinking about him a lot, lately.

“Levi,” Eren says, and he sounds a lot like he had in the corridor—like his voice was coming from too far away, like it was hidden in static, “I really wanna get out of here.”

There’s no hesitation when Levi replies, “okay.”

(The plate of fruit will be cleaned before they end up leaving. Eren will be sitting on the floor at Levi’s feet, just within reach of Levi’s clean fingers as he absentmindedly toys with Eren’s hair. There won’t be much to say as they finish breakfast, because any questions Eren might’ve had will die before they ever manage to leave his lungs. Every single one will taste of ashes when he breathes in.

“ _it’s my fault,_ ” Eren will say to the cold coffee between his hands. When he drinks it, it won’t be near sweet enough, but he’ll take what he can get. “ _the—annie. it’s my fault._ ”

Levi’s fingers will go still in his hair, and he will uncross his ankles, slowly. The motion will remind Eren of a predator or—something. It’ll send chills down Eren’s spine. “ _that’s fucking ridiculous_ ,” Levi will tell him. The wicker chair will creak when he leans forward to hold Eren’s gaze with his own. “ _you’ve said yourself that you’ve never_ asked _for what happens to you_.”

“ _yeah_.” Eren’s voice will rub against itself like dried wheat. “ _i know. but this time i—”_ It will get stuck in his throat, the first time. He’ll need to clear his throat twice to keep going. “ _she asked me what i was going to do when i was king. the vision i had for the—what i want for the kingdom—i don’t even know what i’m doing._ ” Levi’s fingers will be trembling against the crown of Eren’s head. “ _i think i gave the wrong answer._ ”

The pause between them will be as still as freshly frozen earth. And then Levi will say, “ _eren, you know i love you_.”

Eren will blink—and then he will say, “ _yeah. you know i love you?_ ”

“ _yeah_.” Levi’s eyes will be endless, like always. Something complicated will be haunting them. “ _but what i want you to remember is that i fucking love you and i want you to trust me. okay?_ ”

Eren will blink again, this time slowly. “ _okay?_ ”

“ _okay. so believe me when i tell you that i will walk my ass into hell and drag anybody’s soul back onto this earth kicking and screaming before i let anyone tell you that your vision for the kingdom is anything less than miraculous_.” A fire will be burning, somewhere behind Levi’s pupils. Eren will be able to catch glimpses of it, flashing against the storm looping around them. “ _you’ll be a great king_.”

Eren’s throat will feel too tight to speak, but he’ll try anyway. “ _i want to be_.”

“ _i can feel it in my fucking bones_.”

When Levi kisses him, Eren will taste at least some kind of truth against his lips.

It will remind him of strawberries.)

-

(The Queen Regent had looked at him as if she couldn’t believe what the fuck had just come out of his mouth. Or maybe it was that she couldn’t believe what the fuck had come out of his mouth coupled with the fact that he’d said it while standing perfectly upright, his hands folded behind his back, holding her gaze with an iron grip.

Each of these things separately were grounds enough to lose his job. Put together? He’d probably be lucky to ever work again.

But instead of throwing him out or stringing him up, the only thing the Queen Regent had done was narrow her eyes and say, “ _what?_ ”

“ _i’m taking eren out today,_ ” Levi had said for the second time in exactly the same way. “ _there’s a nursery just inside the city limits that i get a lot of my inventory from, and i’d like him to see it. it’ll be time to remodel the gardens before you know it, your majesty._ ”

Levi had known for much of his life that the Queen Regent had never learned to throw a person down physically, but he’d heard a thousand times over how a finely placed word could draw blood—and so it had been no surprise that he felt her voice against his throat like a blade. “ _are you aware of what’s happened? there’s been an attempt on his life, and you’re asking to take him_ outside the palace?”

When Levi blinked, he could see flashes of Eren’s face that night. Blood had gathered on his upper lip, had worked its way down his chin. His skin hadn’t started to bruise yet, but Levi had known exactly where they would rise just by looking at him. His knuckles had been broken open, weeping blood and clear fluid, but hadn’t yet started to scab.

Levi’d felt his heart drop into his stomach—and then he’d felt it fracture, somewhere in its center.

Propriety had kept him in the ballroom while someone had held a dagger to Eren’s throat. _Propriety_ had been Levi’s excuse for every lapse in fucking judgment he’d had since they’d met in the sunflower field, and so propriety had dissolved against his tongue as he’d reset Eren’s nose between his thumbs.

And so to the Queen Regent he’d said, “ _first, i’m not asking. i’m telling you that i’m taking eren out today. second, i’m sure_ you’re _aware that this most recent attempt on eren’s life happened during your own fucking party, so i don’t feel like some mystery outing is going to put him in any more danger than him staying in his room where anyone who’s been in the palace for the past week could find him._ ” He’d paused, and the air had smelled of incense. The King Consort had been sitting at her side, silent.

Something shifted on the Regent’s face just then—and, in some ways, what she’d ended up saying had been unexpected. “ _sometimes i wish you’d taken that position in the guard. you’re the kind of stubborn that would keep him safe._ ” When she’d shut her eyes like that, it’d reminded him so much of Eren that he’d almost looked away—and he’d almost failed to notice that she hadn’t used the royal plural. But not quite. “ _but it is what it is. you’ve gotten your way,_ groundskeeper. _if you can get him out of bed, you can take him out of the palace._ ”

Levi had almost squinted, in that moment, to get a better look at her face. Something about the skin beside her eyes had made him wonder if she’d been crying.

But he’d merely bowed, dropped his eyes to the star-speckled floor, and said, “ _thanks for the honor, your majesty_.”

He’d been certain that she’d snorted—just like Eren would’ve.)

Eren’s eyes are closed against the not-quite-winter wind blows in from the open window as they wind down the highway toward the city. It pushes against his hair with heavy hands, pulling it back from his forehead as if it knows there’s supposed to be a midday sun there, blazing gold. The sky itself stretches above them almost-covered by white-gray clouds, setting the mood for the coming season with diluted daylight and more-or-less brittle air.

At this point, Levi wonders if Eren’s going to end up saying anything at all on this trip—and then he asks, “where did you live before you got here?”

Levi’s foot twitches on the gas with his surprise. “I’ve told you, I traveled a lot. My uncle and I were—“

“In a theatre thing, yeah.” Eren’s eyes look to be lined with ice, crawling from the outside inward as he watches the scenery pass by them. Levi remembers that he’s supposed to be keeping his eyes on the road. “But, like—where have you _lived?_ Like for a long period.”

Levi’s memories pile up thick against his teeth. They’ve been easier to call up, recently. It makes it harder to lie—or maybe it’s that he’s fucking tired of skirting the edges of the truth, of letting it hold itself against his back like it’s about to run him through. It’s—it’s as if he’s blackmailing himself with all the shit he knows, and it’s starting to drive him _crazy_.

(“ _she tried to kill me_.” Barely coherent, eyes wild, blood coagulating on his lips. “ _she tried to—she tried to fucking kill me_.”)

No, that’s not quite right. It’s the fact that he missed his window to stop lying that’s driving him crazy.

“I spent quite a bit of time in Yvini,” Levi says, speaking with in a way that feel more truthful than anything else he’d considered. “I even learned a lot of the language while we were staying there. Theatre shapes itself for its audience, or some shit, and my uncle’s troupe thought that it’d be best if we knew what we were saying before we performed classics and pissed somebody off.”

Eren breathes a laugh against the torn skin of his knuckles, glancing away from the highway to meet Levi’s eyes for a hairsbreadth of a second. The wind shifts against his hair as the road curves just a little, scattering it above his eyebrows. “You always talk like you’re not cultured, and yet you were in the theatre. It’s just... weird.”

“I didn’t really care for a lot of my roles,” Levi says, and the capital starts to form on the horizon, bleeding out of some fog that’s coming from the sea even this far inland. A drizzling rain begins to bead on the windshield. “For the record, we’re _not_ going to the theatre today. I’ve had enough of that shit for a lifetime, thanks.”

Eren laughs for the second time, but this one feels... odd. It’s not _sharp_ , or anything, it’s just— _flat_ , he thinks. It hits the floorboards of the car with a _thud_ , but doesn’t roll anyone. It doesn’t bounce, or carry, or _move_ much at all. It’s not right.

There’s something happening inside the cab of this truck that Levi can’t describe yet, but it feels a lot like stepping into hot water. His muscles are tensing against the sensation as Eren says, “I wasn’t playing a _guessing game_. I was just—” He shrugs with one shoulder, twisting his lips. “I was just curious, I guess. I just wanted to know, or something. Not that it was bugging me, or—I don’t know, I—“

Levi uses a split-second flicker of his eyes to judge where Eren’s cheek is before he reaches over to tap the knuckle of his index finger against his skin. There’s mist gathering there from the open window.

“Hey,” Levi can practically taste the rainwater against his lips, “feel free to ask away. It’s not like anyone knows me like you do anyway. I just don’t want you to get yourself all hyped up for some fucking fantastic surprise and then ending up disappointed.” 

“You’re seriously underestimating the absolute _technique_ of your surprises. I’m _not_ going to be disappointed.” Eren catches Levi’s hand before he can drop it away, and he laces their fingers together with practiced ease. It’s so _natural_ that Levi doesn’t know what he did before this—doesn’t know what he’d do without this. “Kinda sucks, though, don’t you think? Being through with acting?”

Levi slides his free hand along the steering wheel, pulling into a practically-empty parking lot edged in immaculately kept Karley rose fountain grass. “Not really.” Levi lets a half-smile pull at one corner of his mouth, arching both his eyebrows as he watches Eren’s face while the truck idles in park. “It gets fucking exhausting, said so yourself. Besides, wait ‘til your mother sees us kissing in one of those hallways. _That’ll_ be something worth seeing.”

Eren laughs so hard that it looks like he catches himself by surprise, and whatever it was that he’d wanted to know evaporates beneath it. There’s an embarrassed color rising into the apples of his cheeks, and it darkens the skin of his throat as it moves across his features. The smile on his face is wide enough to dimple one of his cheeks and his hair settles into half the mess it’d been when Levi had pulled him out of bed. He looks for all the world like the college student he’s dressed as, and he’s so _achingly_ beautiful that Levi can’t help but want to kiss him.

And so he does.

He doesn’t let his hands wander too far, even when he feels Eren’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks—but he does open his mouth, lets Eren do the same, lets their heads angle in different ways as their cheeks warm up from the ride itself.

Eren’s hair leaves behind the feeling of mist against Levi’s eyebrows when he pulls away, and he’s just a little bit absent when he says, “so—where are we?”

Levi’s lips are chapped when he draws his own tongue across them. He thinks he can catch a hint of strawberries and coffee and cinnamon. It must be what winter mornings will taste like, soon—tomorrow and a month from now, a year from now and a decade from now.

He has to clear his throat before he says, “this is the nursery I get all my shit from, for the gardens. I don’t exactly have the space to grow everything myself, so I’ve got to order most of it from here. It’s the only place I trust within less-than-a-day’s drive, and I wanted your opinion on what the winter gardens’ll look like.”

Eren shakes his head, once. Disbelief moves from one side of his face to the other, like wind through sunflowers. “I’m not even a _little_ qualified to give any input on flowers. Besides—besides, what does it matter? The gardens _always_ look beautiful because _you_ always make them. I defer to your expertise.”

Levi turns off the engine, tucking the keys in his back pocket as he pops the driver’s side door open and slips out from behind the wheel. Eren isn’t even half-a-heartbeat behind him, the passenger-side door slamming shut before Levi deigns to comment. “It matters to me,” he says, meeting Eren behind the bed of the truck, offering his hand out, palm-up. “And you know all that shit I did with the autumn gardens? I’d like to be able to do that, but larger scale. I’d like to be able to picture you in them _before_ I put them together. This’ll make it easier.”

Eren’s hand is warm despite the late-autumn chill, and the mist once more gathering in his hair. “You’re blowing smoke.”

“I’m being _serious_. I wanna see what some of the things I want will look like with you beside them. _And_ I think you’ve passed enough of my basic botany quizzes to have some idea of what we’re doing.” A scoff, barely louder than the sound of mist as it gathers on the truck beside them. “Have I ever given you a reason to doubt me?”

A pause that Eren doesn’t feel—but Levi feels his heart slide against the mud between his lungs.

Eren squeezes Levi’s fingers at the same time he rolls his eyes, unaware of the stumble Levi’s thoughts at just taken. It feels as if he’d skinned his knees against concrete as they walk toward the stairs, a greenhouse rising behind a brick building with wide windows, scattered plants and patio furniture stretching far to either side.

“I guess not,” Eren says.

“You _guess_ not. Okay.” The automatic doors sigh open as they hit the rubber ‘welcome’ mat, a bell chiming above their heads when they cross the threshold. The polished wood of the front counter makes the store-house look far more inviting than it has any right to be, despite the fact that it’s empty.

It smells of potting soil and heavy mulch, of hummingbird feed and freshly watered plants—and Petra’s voice rises above the shelves from the backmost corner of the small building, punctuated by the sound of her moving between displays. “One second! Sorry, you know how it goes, you expect dreary days to be kind of slow—oh!” Her body stops before her sentence does, and a smile touches every inch of her face. “Oh, shit, hi Levi! And—company!” Her attention shifts between them both, curiosity curling just beneath her eyes. “You’re new.”

“He’s with me,” Levi says. Eren’s grip is becoming almost painfully tight against his fingers, even as Petra drops a quick once-over to their hands. “We’re here for a little bit of business, a little bit of going out on the town.”

“Palace life a little rough?” Politeness lifts Petra’s tone just a hair too high, and Levi can see the questions attempting to get the better of her. He can almost catch glimpses of rolling against one another when she opens her mouth. “You _both_ work there?”

“In different capacities. So you can see why we’d want a little time to ourselves.” Eren shifts his weight between his feet at Levi’s side, and Levi can _see_ him thinking—just like he knows almost exactly what he’s paying attention to. Four exits: one behind them, one at the back of the store, and one to either side. Plenty of things to push over if necessary. How would he get Eren out? Easy—

Levi stops himself, and Petra nods her head. “Well, make yourself at home. The order forms are behind the desk when you’re ready. We’ll catch up when you inevitably have to stop by and pick up all the shit you need in a few weeks.” Her eyes move back-and-forth between them once more, a whiplash of motion. “It was nice to meet you—“

Eren smiles, just a little, and from this angle it looks like a giveaway—all courtesy and practiced grace, even underneath the cuts and the bruises and the weight of everything else. But then it shifts into something different, but the same, but not quite, and it’s bending beneath the charm that he’d be unable to leave behind if he’d _tried_.

“You too,” Eren tells her as if he’d dropped it into her hands instead of cutting off her gentle press for his name. “It’s really beautiful here.”

Her hair moves between every shade of orange as she tosses it, the ranch-style lighting turning some of it the color of pristine straw. “I know. But thanks for saying so. Enjoy the tour—Levi knows every inch of this place by now.”

She disappears back between the shelving, her footsteps following a path that Levi is certain is more habit than intent.

And then it’s just the two of them, slipping around the front counter as Levi leads Eren outside through the door in the right wall, settled between winter-breed bird seed and rain-resistant bird houses.

The drizzle outside is still steady—no better or worse than they’d left it in the parking lot. The foliage outside is still colored for the fall, all rich reds and burnt oranges, royal purples and heavy blues. But between the autumn-bloomed plant-life and the constant tropics of the greenhouse sits the hardier, winter-ready blossoms.

Eren’s sneakers are practically silent against the pebbled pathways as they make their way forward, the sound muffled by the gentle murmur of dripping water against the earth.

“So,” Levi begins.

“So,” Eren parrots back, swinging their hands between them, a gesture casual enough that it gives Levi pause, pressing down on his stomach hard enough to make him want to throw up.

“So maybe next time turn down the wattage on that charm, Your _Radiance_ ,” Levi tells him, when he means to say something else entirely—something about what this moment is like, what the next moment will be like, what he wants the rest of their _lives_ to be like. “I shouldn’t need sunglasses indoors.”

“ _Ha-ha_. Shut up.” Eren’s nose wrinkles at that, a bead of water dragging itself over the raised cut at the bridge of his nose before tipping too far to the side and trailing down his cheek. It’s like watching a star fall, or whatever. Like watching gems throw light from between shadows made by leaves. “I was trying to be _sneaky_. I think I deserve some credit for that.”  

“Yeah,” and Eren is already elbowing him gently in the ribs, making an exasperated sound in the back of his throat, “it sure is sneaky when you try and blind people. Very helpful.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Eren says with deep-colored cheeks, lifting the hand that isn’t laced through Levi’s and pointing at feather-headed grasses, sitting tall in deep pots. “Do something else and tell me what those are instead.”

When he says that, it feels so—this is so _normal_ , it’s like walking around the gardens in the middle of the day, sneaking kisses and glances, hiding laughter and conversation, knowing that the gardens would keep their secrets, if only because Levi had built them to do so. Except the ones designed for winter would be something else. Something bigger, maybe. Something secret and celebratory. Something demure and obvious. Something—

“It’s called Karl Foerster grass.” A breeze tosses droplets of mistwater to the ground, gathering in patches that’ll be puddles by the end of the day. “Fuck if I know why. It’ll grown halfway up your chest, probably closer to my collar. Stays bloomed through winter, if you care for it right. You can get it with a pink tint that I think’ll look nice.”

“Huh.” Levi watches as Eren’s eyes follow the motion of the grasses in the breeze, and there’s a distance there that’s hard to quantify. “Where do you want to put it?”

“Around the base of our gazebo,” Levi says. “Where the cosmos and sunflowers go during the warmer months. I was thinking of some moss on the outer edges of the grasses, but I’d want you to look through them first.”

Eren doesn’t say anything to that, and the thing covering his features drifts just a little farther out, almost out of Levi’s sight.

The silence stretches between them in thick ribbons, like taffy left in a fridge to cool—until Eren asks, “did I ever tell you about the chef’s assistant that I met once?”

Levi’s eyelashes are chilled when he blinks, and they leave damp imprints against his cheeks. “What?”

“When I was younger.” It’s a memory coming from far away, from a piece of Eren’s life that Levi hadn’t seen. “I was thirteen, and my family went to one of the provinces for some state-business or some shit, and my mother brought me along. This—this chef’s apprentice was, like, eighteen or nineteen, but he was tolerating me walking after him because I didn’t know anyone else there except Hannes and Nile. At the time, he’d looked too young for me to know he was a _babysitter_.”

It feels like Levi’s underwater, with the pressure weighing down on his ears like it is. It tugs at the echo of some gossip he’d heard years and years ago, shared between the kitchen staff at the palace.

He thinks he knows where this story is going.

“Anyway, there was this state dinner, and the food smelled like some of the stuff we have here, but different. Regional differences, I guess. But—but this kid, who’s name I didn’t even know, he was walking by and took a piece of curried carrot from my plate.” Eren’s no longer trying to follow the motions of the grasses as the mist loops around them, gathering on the hems of Levi’s sleeves. “He winked at me, like it was supposed to be a secret. It was different than playing with people here, a little.”

“Sounds like he was itching for a talking-to by Her Majesty,” Levi tells him. He wipes condensation from Eren’s knuckles with his thumb. “Takes guts.”

Eren’s laugh is sharp and singular, the smack of a marble against asphalt. His skin looks like it’s washing out into that gray color from—from this morning in the bathroom, as he’d been leaning against the closest wall. “You would know, right?” His throat bobs when he swallows—and Levi knows that he’s heard this told before, as he’d been moving between the kitchens and the staff dormitories. “So he stole this piece of curried carrot, and he ate it. I think he’d been proud of his work, or something. But then his knees hit the floor, and his hands came up to his throat, and his face started to turn purple because he couldn’t fucking breathe.”

Levi remembers the palace kitchens going _crazy_ —there’d been palace guards inspecting everything.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I just—sat there. The whole dining hall was—was losing its fucking mind, and I couldn’t even move. I just—” Eren blinks, slow and just this side of terrified. “I’d never seen a person die before, much less just because I was there.”

Levi feels something catch against the underside of his ribs. “Eren, you have to know that wasn’t your fault. _None_ of this shit is your fault.”

(A prince, not yet introduced to the kingdom he’d been born to rule over, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. A hallway closer to the center of the palace, wreathed in shadows and the weak light of wall sconces, dimmed for the occasion.

“ _who are you?_ ”)

Eren keeps speaking, and it’s as if Levi can feel the ground coming out from beneath him. “I kind of wish it’d just been me—that I’d never even’ve known.”

Levi unlaces their fingers, his palm burning against Eren’s own. He takes Eren’s biceps and shifts his body in front of the Foerster grass, watching the pink-gold feathers sway behind him. Eren blinks at him, startled, and his eyelashes leave pearls of mist behind when he blinks. He looks like someone who’s walked out of a fucking storybook, trying to blend into a world that’s just a hair too mundane.

Even dressed in a fucking university sweatshirt, even with worn jeans that would look perfectly in place on some overworked college student, even with bruises on his face and a cut on his lip and a split across his nose, Eren looks like a _fucking_ Prince. It’s in the curve of his shoulders and the tilt of his head. It’s in the way he blinks and how he shifts when he stands. It’s in the way his eyes keep moving up and down Levi’s body as if he’s searching for some kind of answer to a question he hasn’t asked aloud.

He is at once down-to-earth and absolutely unreachable—almost.

Almost. Or... before. Or... historically. Not anymore. No more.

“Uh,” Eren clears his throat around a sound that had gotten wedged there, his full attention brought back to _this_ instant in _this_ ramshackle garden-market during _this_ early afternoon. Levi feels it like a heated blanket over his shoulders. “Levi? What’re you—”

“Shh. I’m thinking,” which isn’t a lie. He is _absolutely_ thinking. About—a lot of things. “Wait one second. Don’t move.”

“Levi?” A question, directed at his back as he steps around winter bushes, weaves between shrubs that are more branches than blossoms at this time in the fall, steps around meticulously placed statues of representations of gods as old as this country is. “Are you okay?”

Levi stops beside a raised shelf made of treated wood, lined with Lenten roses in porous stone pots. He picks one, a deep purple-red, lined in white, and breaks its stem halfway down, leaving just enough that it’ll grow back when the plant is pruned properly.

He’s sure that Petra won’t mind a single flower.

Eren is exactly where Levi had left him, his back still facing the Foerster grass, and confusion has smeared itself across his face like scattered fog. It’s clinging to his eyelashes, his hair, his eyebrows, his shoulders—and it deepens when Levi steps into his space, the toes of his boots parallel with Eren’s sneakers.

The blossom is soft between his fingers, its petals decorated with the drizzling rain that’s covered everything by now. The droplets shift as Levi lifts the broken stem and tucks it behind Eren’s left ear, pushing his hair back to make room enough for it to sit, undisturbed.

“Uh,” Eren says again, and whatever anguish had been haunting the hollows of his cheeks has been swallows up by something else. By this. “Do I look pretty?”

Levi wonders, looking at him, if this is what the future would look like.

(Eren in the summertime, with a circlet fit for a king—interlocking bands of white-gold in a loose braid, each stem decorated with an elegant design of leaves. The gardens would hum with the sounds of honeybees and the chatter of deeper streams, with the whisper of delicate breezes and the turning of novel pages.

Eren would look exactly the same as now, in some ways.

There would be a small sunflower tucked behind his ear—and Eren would smile, would let it dimple his cheek, would shut his book without marking the page, and he’d stand. The sun would travel along the curve of his circlet, catch on the burst of light in the center of his forehead, Levi would feel his knees go weak.

And then Eren would say, “ _can i cash in on that kiss now?_ ”)

“Eren,” Levi says, and he thinks his voice might be breaking at the edges. This feels like the perfect fucking moment to just tell the truth, to get it out there, to tell him that there’s nowhere on this earth that’s safer than right here, because if there’s anything that Levi knows, it’s how to think like a killer would.

(“ _she tried to kill me—”_ )

But instead he says, “I am so fucking sorry for all of this shit that’s happened to you.” Eren’s hands come up to circle Levi’s wrists when he presses them to either side of his face. It keeps their eyes locked like this. “It’s not fair, and I get that, and I get that it’s impossible to be flippant all the time like you are and not be pissed about it.”

He doesn’t know what expression working its way through Eren’s eyes when he says, “Levi, I didn’t mean to—”

“But _none_ of this is your fault. Do you understand me? Not that apprentice, not Annie trying to fucking kill you, and not the way she died.” Something about the Lenten rose is making Eren’s eyes a shade darker, and they’re swallowing everything. Levi thinks he’s drowning, except he can’t shut the fuck up. “You’re not—this isn’t something that you’ve got to just think about by yourself, or—lay in bed for, or _whatever_. It’s not just you, anymore. So let me fucking catch you before you get all... like that.”

“Again with the _like that_.” Eren’s left hand slides backward on Levi’s wrist, the pads of his fingers brushing over Levi’s knuckles, until he finds the winter-rose with the tip of his thumb. The tips of his fingers trail along its petals. “You’re asking me to do a trust fall. You’re kind of hung up on that today.”

(Blood on Eren’s nose, his lips, his chin. Pupils blown wide, eyes unable to settle on anything. His jacket, partially unlaced but pulled too tight. Breaths, sharp and painful and nowhere deep enough. Skin that’s too flushed and too pallid all at once.

 _there’s no fucking way i can tell him now_.)

“Kind of,” Levi says. “You keep looking at shit that I can’t see.”

Eren hums, low enough that Levi can feel it in the center of his chest. It brings to mind the image of tires treading mud and going nowhere. “It’s stupid that you ask for that.”

“Shut up.” Eren’s sweatshirt is going dark around his collar, around the hems of his sleeves, around the university logo. The mist is starting to settle into Levi’s joints. “No it’s not and it’s rude to say so. Maybe you _were_ raised in a really expensive barn.”

Eren doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t pull at the other end of the joke he’d made when the humidity had tasted of warmer days. “It _is_ stupid, because I’ve already done it. The fucking—the trust fall. I came up with that metaphor _way_ before you did.”

The Foerster grass chuckles when it rubs together—or it would’ve if Levi’ hadn’t found himself laughing, if Eren hadn’t squeezed his wrists with half-dumb laughter of his own, if the rose petals hadn’t been whispering so loudly against the skin of Eren’s cheek when he’d tossed his head.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, this laughter, and it hurts a little when it rises up and out of Levi’s throat.

But then Eren’s lips are on his own, and they’re chapped, and they’re a little cold, but they taste of their coming winter, still—cinnamon and coffee and strawberries.

When Levi speaks next, his words are traced against Eren’s mouth.

“Come on,” he says. “We’ve got moss to pick out for the gardens.”

“Yes, dear.” Eren replies—and the laughter starts all over again.

(The rain will stop by late afternoon, though the clouds will be hovering in the sky like soaked-through cotton. Birds will have gathered in the nursery’s shrubs to whistle among the plant-life and peck at feed left out in metal-work bird feeders.

The two of them will have found an almost-dry place to sit by then, leaning against one another beside the greenhouse, the air weighed down by the scent of watered foliage. A semi-circle of snowdrops will be gathered around the stone picnic table just outside the reach of the greenhouse’s glare.

“ _i think in a couple weeks it’ll be time to strip down the sunflower field,_ ” Levi will say, the completed floral order form sitting on the bench between them. The Lenten rose will still be firmly in place behind Eren’s ear—the promise of some kind of future for them both of them, even if Levi hadn’t particularly described it that way. “ _did you still want to help with that?_ ”

“ _what kind of question is that?_ ” Eren will reply. “ _of course i do. i can probably even recruit some manual labor, if you’re interested_.” His eyes will be backlit by sunlight, despite the fact that it’s hidden by layers of clouds above them. They’ve always looked like fucking gemstones anyway. “ _who cares who knows, right?_ ”

Levi will reach across the short distance between them to drag his thumb over the sunburst in the center of his forehead, rubbing away the concealer that Eren had so carefully applied earlier that morning. It’s more symbolic than anything. In practice, Eren will go back to the truck while Levi hands it off to Petra, and no one will be any the wiser of just who had been tucked away in the gardens with the head groundskeeper of the royal house.

But Levi will wipe away the concealer on his jeans anyway, will look Eren in the eye, and he will say, “ _exactly. who fucking cares who knows?_ ”

And it won’t matter, in those moments that carry with it the smell of past-and-future rains, who Levi was before. It won’t matter the things that he’d done or what he hadn’t said, because whatever-this-is will be the Levi-who-chooses. The Levi-of-now.

And as long as it’s only himself he’s telling, there will be no one who can correct him.)


End file.
